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In truly bizarre scenes outside Indonesia’s Communications Ministry in Central Jakarta on Thursday evening, hundreds of onlookers resorted to praying and chanting Allahu Akbar to force a man to stop behaving like a monkey and climb down from a tree.

The man, a security guard identified as Fika who worked at the ministry, scaled the tree after evening prayers and began to swing from one branch to another, beating his chest and screeching and howling in the manner of a monkey.

Attempts by the man’s colleagues to urge him to climb down from his perch failed, with Fika only climbing higher into the upper branches of the tree. They then began to pray and chant.

Though many of the hundreds of bystanders thought the display was amusing, firefighters who arrived at the scene at 6:30 p.m. were less than happy, particularly when Fika refused to jump down on to a specialized air mattress.

They were even less pleased when they raised a ladder and Fika began jumping from the tree to the ladder and then back to the tree.

This prompted security guards at the ministry to come up with a new approach to encourage Fika to abandon his lofty perch — bananas.

This, however, also failed with Fika eating one of the bananas whole, including the skin, as he began to hammer his fists against the tree.

Then the shaman arrived.

They invoked spells to “drive away the spirit of the monkey,” which they believed had possessed Fika. The security guard, however, seemed unaware of their presence and instead began munching on the leaves of the tree.

This brought about another round of praying and chanting.

At 8:45 p.m., Fika finally began to climb down from his aerial abode, but when he touched the ground he began walking on his knuckles toward the security post before rolling around on the ground.

As he was held down, the shaman again began attempts to exorcise the spirits, which caused Fika to faint. He was taken away.

The spectacle caused massive traffic congestion outside the ministry.