From: John MacDougall <apakabar@clark.net>
Subject: IN: ST - Behind the Riots
To: apakabar@clark.net (John MacDougall)
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 1997 20:43:58 -0500 (EST)

   Behind the riots in Indonesia...

   (Editorial.  The Straits Times.  Monday, December 30, 1996)
____________________________________________________________

LAST Thursday's riot in an Indonesian town, which resulted in four
known dead, was dismayingly familiar in its build-up.  It began as
fury against high-handedness by public officials but developed
into an assault on unrelated Chinese and Christian interests.  Where
there is seething discontent and alienation felt by the masses, the
better-off minorities are fair game.  But for an effective army, it
is frightful to think how mob violence can rage out of control.  At
one stage last week, the spillover into a nearby district from the
trouble that began in the West Java town of Tasikmalaya threatened
a chain reaction.  Mercifully, the army was ready.  For a country
with 196 million people, among whom are 26 million families
officially clasified as poor but also a handful of well-connected
minority Chinese and pribumi who are rich beyond imagining,
sporadic outbursts can be expected.  And though explosions of
public anger or criminal anarchism are never treated lightly
by the authorities, it is disturbing to note that the frequency is
exceeded by causes that are getting to be flimsy, even irrational.
Uppermost on the minds of government and Abri (armed forces)
leaders must be this:  Is social anger bubbling to the surface,
or are these disparate acts of vandalism?  The suspicion is
strong that it is the former.  If so, the authorities should face it
squarely.

In Thursday's riot, a mob estimated by police at 5,000 took to
the streets solely because rumours had circulated that one of
several Islamic teachers beatun up by police on a complaint of
theft had died.  What followed saw a pattern consistent with past
disturbances:  churches and cars burned, homes and businesses
owned by Chinese sacked.  And once again, frightened Chinese
Indonesians are forced to re-examine their future.  In October,
the trial for blasphemy of a Muslim heretic set off rioting in the
eastern Java town of Situbondo.  The count: five dead, homes,
Christian churches and schools and a Hindu temple razed.
Religious zealotry was clearly implicated. But the National
Commission on Human Rights concluded that the Situbondo
incident was the work of criminals, not a religious conflict.
This calls to mind a warning by Abri chief Gen Feisal Tanjung
the day before the Tasikmalaya incident that trouble caused
by religious differences is more dangerous to national stability
than racial or ethnic conflict.

Thoughtful Indonesians should worry whether the string of
incidents is not a sign that law and order is fraying at the edges.
The corollary has to be that, although poverty has been reduced
in the three decades of President Suharto's New Order, inequality
arising from the persistent wealth gap between rich and poor
is endangering national cohesion.  Mob attacks then become
convenient for venting frustration.  Whether they are caused
directly by religious or race animosities would not matter
that much.   Any provocation would be all that embittered jobless
people or urban squatters need to start burning houses,
businesses and places of worship.  The Tasikmalaya riot fits
that pattern.  Suggestions by the authorities that organised
saboteurs with possible communist links could have instigated
the trouble, even if correct, should not obviate the need to
examine deep-seated resentments.  That could also explain the
July riot which broke out after a police raid on the headquarters
of the opposition PDI, the Democratic Party.  Youths have even
gone on the rampage over soccer matches and pop concerts.

The underlying discontent needs to be tackled.  There are
government programmes to help the poor and relieve poverty.
More needs to be done, and more effectively, so that results
can be monitored.  There are also acts of executive fiat.  One
such was President Suharto's decree last week that individuals
and companies with after-tax income of more than 100 million
rupiah (S$60,000) must donate 2 per cent to a fund to help the
poor.  It will make the rich see red; one company stated baldly
that it would pass the additional "tax" on to consumers.  If the
rich have a better alternative, they should speak up.  Stability
in Indonesia is everyone's business.




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