More than two thousand people took to the streets of the Indonesian capital Sunday to protest the government's plan to raise fuel prices on October 1 to rein in ballooning oil subsidies.
More than 2,000 members of the hard-line Islamic Hizbut Tahrir movement gathered in central Jakarta.
Speakers, including the group's spokesman Ismail Yusanto, said the government could take other steps to pay for the subsidies without raising oil prices, "and make poor suffer more".
He said that the government, among other measures, should confiscate the assets of corrupt officials to help pay for the subsidy.
Yusanto said that although government subsidies were rising with the high oil prices, the government was also raising more money from oil revenues.
"Why then should fuel prices be raised," he asked. Some 100 workers from the Alliance of Independent Labour Unions held a separate demonstration to protest the planned price increase.
"Reject the fuel price increase," said their banners. Dozens of women from several women's group also protested the price hike.
The government has said the October 1 increase - the exact amount of which has yet to be announced - will be implemented simultaneously with a compensation programme designed to ease its impact on the country's poor.
High global oil prices have dealt government finances a double-edged blow.
The government has snapped up dollars to pay for higher oil prices, putting the rupiah under pressure whilst also having to support increased subsidies to keep domestic fuel prices artificially low.
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