JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Stepping up their daily protests against President Suharto, students battled police on the tropical resort island of Bali on Thursday as demonstrators rallied on campuses in at least seven other Indonesian cities.
Anti-riot police fired volleys of tear gas and clubbed students who hurled rocks at them at the gates of Udayana University in the Bali capital of Denpasar, home to an international airport that caters to hundreds of thousands of tourists a year.
Several officers and at least a dozen students were injured, police and witnesses said. Some protesters were taken to a hospital emergency room with head wounds, and one suffered a broken hand.
There were no arrests, police Maj. Syamsul Hidayat said by telephone.
Students have been staging bigger and bolder rallies for political and economic reform for weeks as Indonesia weathers its worst financial crisis in decades. Their key demand is the ouster of Suharto, who remains in firm control of the military.
The violence in Bali broke out when several thousand students tried to march off the campus and hundreds of police with sticks and shields pushed them back. The military has warned students to keep their protests on university grounds.
In Jakarta, as many as 2,000 student protesters defied the ban on street rallies, marching onto a traffic-clogged road and shouting slogans against Suharto, a former army general who has been in power for three decades.
Students also marched in Solo, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Bandarlampung and several other towns. Police scuffled briefly with students on another campus in the capital.