Business community to rebuild Tasikmalaya

TASIKMALAYA, West Java (JP): The country's business community, including banks, insurance companies and businessmen, has pledged to help rebuild the town's economy following the riot here last month.

Banks have vowed to smoothen the process of securing loans for victims of the incident, a number of businessmen said here Wednesday in a meeting with West Java Governor R. Nuriana, chairman of the provincial legislative body Mudin Sutaryadi, and Tasikmalaya regent Suljana WH.

Nuriana said the local administration has already begun to restore social, political and economic stability in the regency, where youths torched shops, buildings and places of worship last Dec. 26 over reports of police brutality toward three local Moslem teachers.

Four people were killed in the rampage which caused Rp 85 billion (US$46 million) in material losses, and rendered thousands of workers jobless.

However, Nuriana emphasized that the "situation in Tasikmalaya has returned to normal."

He added that the incident will not affect the May 29 general elections, when some 120 million Indonesians are scheduled to go to the polls.

Meanwhile, the first deputy chairwoman of the National Commission on Human Rights, Miriam Budiardjo, said in Jakarta Wednesday that the violence in Tasikmalaya was the result of a general feeling of dissatisfaction among the people.

"This feeling of dissatisfaction is connected to economic disparity," she said.

The Commission, in a statement issued in Jakarta late Tuesday, said the Tasikmalaya riots were probably incited by a "third party".

It said its fact-finding team had found evidence of this, including posters, banners and pamphlets calling on people to take to the streets.

Several legislators hoped that the military would take legal action against those believed to have incited the riots.

Indonesian Armed Forces chief, Gen. Feisal Tanjung, said Tuesday that the military believes that "intellectual actors" were behind the riots in Tasikmalaya and in Situbondo, East Java, where thousands of people ran amok in October, attacking churches and public facilities. Five people died in that unrest. (ahy/swe)