Monomad Challenge: The Experience of Covering Riots at Night in Jakarta

over 2 years ago

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Hi everyone, how are you guys today, I'm back again with my black and white visuals that you might like and this is my entry for the #monomadchallenge. This time I'm back with my black and white visuals that might be interesting for you to see. This is a visual that I made while covering the riots in Jakarta, in 2019, the riots that occurred at night after the Indonesian Presidential election on May 21, 2019, this incident occurred in front of the General Elections Supervisory Agency (BAWASLU) office. At that time I was getting an assignment to make some visuals in that location. The crowd suddenly started to rage by throwing stones at the office's courtyard, and police officers were on standby by directly blocking and neutralizing the area, then the riots spread and the crowd grew, the riots continued until the morning and even the next day there were still mobs who carried out rally.

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When the riots spread, the officers started firing tear gas to disperse the demonstrations at that time, in the dark of the night they dispersed the crowd. How does tear gas feel, of course it hurts, my eyes sting, it's hard to see, even hard to breathe, but I have to get good visuals, it's really really hard my friend. I came unprepared to cover the riots, without a mask and protective goggles. I didn't expect that there would be a riot that night either.

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What do you think,?? Covering the riots was really difficult, wasn't it, I had several times covered the riots in Jakarta, but this time I will share this incident first, you know why? because this is my most stressful coverage, it's the first time I'm doing such coverage in the capital city of Jakarta. and it became a very valuable experience, coverage of the riots from night to morning and even continued to the next day. I still have some riots in Jakarta that I haven't shared with you, maybe later when the time is right I'll share them again.

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for this time, I hope this doesn't become a bad thing, I just want to share some photo essays that I made while covering the riots in Jakarta. I also only wrote what I saw and what I photographed and experienced at that time, for details of this event, you can do it on a search engine.

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