113 Cianjur farmers detained by police following clash

JAKARTA (JP): Following a riot involving hundreds of farmers in the Agrabinta district of Cianjur, West Java, police arrested 113 farmers and three student activists, Antara reported on Saturday.

Police seized a number of swords, axes and machetes.

In the past week, police said, the farmers have been involved in the destruction of thousands of cocoa plants and coconut hybrids belonging to the Agrabinta state-run Nusantara estate.

Four houses belonging to estate workers were set on fire, as well as two copra plants and three warehouses.

Cianjur Police said they had four suspects.

The students being questioned are Mulyana of the West Java Farmers' Union, Iwan of the Padjadjaran University in Bandung and Karnaen of the Suryakancana Academy in Cianjur.

On Thursday, thousands of farmers staged a protest at the district office. They came from the villages of Rawasari, Warnasari, Bojongkaso, Sukamanah, Pusakasari and Jatisari. They demanded that the district head return land now under the control of the state-run plantations to them immediately.

Elsewhere in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, Police chief Col. Chaerul Rasyid Rasyidi said no ethnic group had the right to drive any other community out from their surroundings.

Ethnic groups in West Kalimantan stated last month that they could no longer live with the migrant Madurese, citing incompatible cultures. Some 200 residents, mainly Madurese, were killed in ethnic clashes in Sambas regency.

It should be admitted, Chaerul told a gathering in which the Forum of Harmony was set up, that not all members of an ethnic group could be in the wrong.

The carnage has resulted in 20,000 refugees. Chaerul added 28,000 residents have armed themselves out of fear.

In Ujungpandang, the South Sulawesi capital, a bomb threat forced Hasanuddin University rector Radi A. Gany and hundreds of his staff to flee their eight-story building on Saturday. A local police bomb squad was summoned but it found no explosives that an unidentified caller said were planted somewhere in the building.

Chief of Ujungpandang Police Col. Jusuf Manggabarani said police had been busy the past two weeks with a series of bomb threats which turned out to be hoaxes. "But we have never taken them lightly. We are investigating the motives behind the threats," he told The Jakarta Post.

Apart from the university, a number of hotels, mosques, churches, hospitals and schools have been targets of bomb threats. (27/anr)