Moments later he was running from another volley of gunfire. The next day, a thin line of nervous riot police faced an equally nervous crowd in Salemba, where students mourning victims of the previous night's violence were gathering at the University of Indonesia. Outside, on the street, a crowd from nearby slums had upturned and burned a van with military plates. A clanging rhythm rang out from teenagers drumming on metal fences and girders. The rhetoric was of revolution.
Parliament is a pantomime.
Thousands of students poured onto the street, joined by the crowd. All were intent on reaching parliament. But part way there they were met by the marines. The pink-bereted troops are under the navy's command. Separate from the army, they have not been associated in the popular imagination with military excess, and their deployment may have been a tactic to assuage public anger.