Call for community leaders to stop unrest

JAKARTA (JP): The National Commission on Human Rights recommended yesterday that the authorities recruit community leaders to nip unrest in the bud.

Commission secretary-general Baharuddin Lopa, who read yesterday the body's statement on the May 23 riot in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, said that security officers should cooperate with community leaders to anticipate and prevent riots.

"The informal leaders should be heard to maintain public order," Lopa said in the statement concluding the body's investigation into worst riot this year.

Accompanied by deputy chairman Miriam Budiardjo, Lopa spoke out against excessive action by security personnel. "In dealing with cases like this riot, it is understandable that some preventive and repressive measures might be needed, but they should never be excessive, such as beatings or torture."

"Those actions obviously violated human rights," he said, adding that arrests should be made in accordance with the law.

Lopa said the relationship between religious and ethnic groups should be improved so that long-held prejudices could be overcome.

Lopa called on the Banjarmasin administration to step up efforts to find the 77 people who went missing in the riot.

In Banjarmasin, the provincial police chief Col. Sanimbar said that his officers had submitted dossiers on four riot suspects to the provincial prosecutors' office. Police had not completed dossiers of another 88 suspects, Antara quoted Sanimbar as saying yesterday.

The riot was sparked by a clash between supporters of the Moslem-based United Development Party (PPP) and Golkar, which was holding its last round of campaigning in the city on May 23.

The PPP supporters were reportedly angry because Golkar had started campaigning before Moslems had finished their Friday prayers. The riot claimed 123 lives; the victims, trapped in burning buildings, were buried near the city last Friday.

Hundreds of houses, several shops, supermarkets, cinemas, churches and hotels were vandalized or burned by rioters in what residents called "eight hours of anarchy".

The commission concluded that six types of human rights violation had been committed by parties in the riot. Lopa said they included freedom from fear, freedom to property, freedom of religion, right to dignity and right not to be tortured.

Security personnel, greatly outnumbered by the estimated 50,000 rioters, could do little to stop the riot until reinforcements arrived from outside the province at about midnight. (11)