On 25 July 2008, 18 students of the Arastamar Evangelical School of Theology in Jakarta (also known as Setia College) were injured when a mob of angry local Muslim residents stormed their campus, brandishing bamboo spears and Molotov cocktails, it was reported. Later, stones were thrown at the school building, damaging several student dormitories. Local residents claimed Setia students were behind a spate of petty thefts and public disturbances. The school temporarily relocated to another section of Jakarta, with 600 female students living in tents at Cibubur campsite and male students dispersed throughout the city. By the end of 2008, students had not been allowed to return to the campus to retrieve their library books, chairs, beds or other property. Since 2003, people in the surrounding Kampung Pulo had protested against the Christian school. After the incident, the government advised the school to move away from Jakarta to Cikarang in West Java.480

In 2007, Human Rights Watch reported that in Papua, eastern Indonesia, there were continuing cases of rape of girls on their way to or from school and widespread looting of schools by security forces. Previously, in 2005, an unspecified number of schools had been burned and destroyed by the Mobile Brigade of elite paramilitaries.481 In October 2005, three Christian schoolgirls were beheaded near Poso, central Sulawesi.482

[Refworld note: The source report "Education under Attack 2010" was posted on the UNESCO website (www.unesco.org) in pdf format, with country chapters run together. Original footnote numbers have been retained here.]

480 Information supplied by Lala Amiroeddin, UNESCO Jakarta office; and The Jakarta Post, "Attack Forces Indonesian Christians Off Campus," August 22, 2008.

481 HRW, Out of Sight: Endemic Abuse in Papua's Highlands, HRW report 19, no. 10 (C) (New York: HRW, 2007).

482 Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers, Child Soldiers Global Report 2008, 174.

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