Jakarta – Kamisan (Thursday) action protesters in Semarang held a #JusticeForGamma rally on the grounds of the Central Java (Jateng) Regional Police Headquarters in Mugatsari Village, South Semarang sub-district, on Thursday afternoon November 28.
During the action, an alliance of protesters from various different groups demanded a full and transparent investigation into the shooting of a Semarang SMKN 4 State Vocational High School student with the initials GRO (17) by a rouge police officer.
Quoting from Detik Jateng, the protesters came from a number of educational institutions including students from the Semarang Walisongo Islamic State University (UIN), students from the University of Diponegoro (Undip) and a number of vocational students. They began the action in front of the Central Java Police headquarters at around 4.50 pm.
The protesters who attended wore black clothing and earlier marched around 300 meters along Jalan Pahlawan to the Central Java Regional Police headquarters, which was already filled with police officers.
The also brought several giant posters voicing the protests of the #JusticeForgamma rally and held a theatrical action depicting a police officer in process of shooting a civilian.
Earlier, the Central Java Regional Police stated that Second Deputy Police Inspector Robig Zaenudin, a member of the Semarang Metropolitan District Police (Polrestabes) Narcotics Investigation Unit, who is suspected of shooting GRO, is being questioned over a code of ethics violation.
Central Java Regional Police Public Relations Division head Senior Commissioner Artanto said that they have placed Zaenudin in special detention.
"For now the person concerned is being examined in a case of the violation of the police's professional code of ethics and has been detained, so their status is they are being examined in a code of ethics case", said Artanto said when contacted on Wednesday November 27.
Artanto explained that in relation to the criminal offense allegedly committed by Zaenudin, he has not yet been declared a suspect because it is still in the process of an investigation. The victim's family, said Artanto, made police report (LP) on Tuesday November 26 and they are still delving into the case.
"For the status of the suspect, in a criminal case right, well, the family of the deceased only just reported it to the police the other day in the form of a LP, so it's still in the investigation process", he said.
The National Police Headquarters (Mabes Polri) is also assisting in the case and a team from the Professionalism and Security Affairs (Propam) Division and the General Supervision Inspectorate (Itwasum) have been deployed to Semarang to conduct an investigation.
Propam Division head Inspector General Abdul Karim stated that they will investigate the case transparently. "We'll be transparent, [we're] involving external [parties], we won't cover anything up", he said.
GRO was allegedly shot dead by Zaenudin on Sunday morning, November 24. Semarang Metropolitan District Police Chief (Kapolrestabes) Senior Commissioner Irwan Anwar earlier claimed that the police officer fired shots in order to break up a student brawl. Aside from the death of GRO, two of his friends were also wounded. (tim/kid)
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Massa Gabungan Tuntut Usut Penembakan Siswa SMK di Semarang".]
