Hundreds of students and kiosk owners at the University of Indonesia (UI) station in Depok fought against the demolition of the kiosks by officials of the state railway operator PT KAI on Wednesday.



One student, identified as Pandia, was injured as both parties to the melee hurled stones at each other.



At least 81 kiosks were dismantled in the station clean-up which had been delayed several times due to strong resistance from the students.



The students said that the station was the last front in their protest against the vendors' eviction, saying that the state company should have relocated the vendors.



'It was not us who initiated the attack by hurling stones. It was a station worker who provoked the confrontation,' UI student Rida Intifadha told reporters.



Tamam, one of the vendors, said that they had stayed in their kiosks for the past two nights to prevent any clandestine demolition.



'We pay our rent for this spot every month, but now they have kicked us away like you would to stray cats,' said the food vendor based for four years at the station.



KAI had planned the eviction well with no trains permitted to stop at the station.



Passengers who usually departed from or alighted at the station were transferred to Pondok Cina and Depok Baru stations. The clean-up was also safeguarded by hundreds of police personnel.



Depok Police operational unit chief Comr. Suratno said that the police were deployed only to prevent conflict and not as back-up to KAI.



'The 1998 Law on Freedom of Speech includes railway stations as public places where demonstrations are forbidden. The students held a demo, but our task there was to maintain security not to make arrests.'



KAI spokesman for the Greater Jakarta operational zone, Sukendar Mulya, said the company had no responsibility to relocate the vendors and that the matter had been handed to each regional administration.



The UI station was the 58th of 63 in Greater Jakarta to be cleaned up for infrastructure improvement.



'The vendors did rent their spots from the company but this [arrangement] has not been extended since last December because we need the site to build a park-and-ride facility at the station,' he told The Jakarta Post.



The station revitalization program, he said, would help to increase rail commuters from the current 500,000 to 1.2 million per day over the next two years.

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