Criminals label for riot victims too premature: Expert

Criminals label for riot victims too premature: Expert

SEMARANG (JP): The authorities were too hasty in branding as
criminals the people who burned to death in a shopping center in
Friday's riot in Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan, Satjipto Rahardjo
said here yesterday.

Satjipto is a law lecturer at Diponegoro University and a
member of the National Commission on Human Rights.

"The local military authorities should not have called the
fire victims looters unless there was strong evidence that
plundering or robbery had happened before the buildings were
burned," he said.

He said that it would have been hard enough to identify the
scorched bodies inside the shopping center, much less determine
whether they were looters or shoppers.

Authorities have said that the victims entered the building
and set it alight after dark while the city was blacked out, and
that they were all trapped by the flames when they stayed inside
the building for fear of riot and police patrols after they had
looted it.

The Banjarmasin Post reported Monday that 164 people had been
reported missing to city police. The authorities said 181 people
had been arrested for involvement in the unrest.

The Banjarmasin riot was triggered by a clash Friday between
supporters of the United Development Party (PPP) and Golkar.

Dozens of shops, government offices and banks were attacked by
thousands of people, many clad in PPP green T-shirts. The crowd
turned violent after Golkar started campaigning before Moslems
had finished their Friday prayer.

Satjipto said the rights commission would meet in Jakarta soon
to discuss sending a fact-finding team to Banjarmasin.

The PPP deputy chairman Hamzah Haz has denied that his party's
supporters had anything to do with the unrest. He stressed his
party had not engineered riot.

"The incident took place spontaneously," he said yesterday at
the PPP headquarters in Jakarta.

The PPP central board issued a statement yesterday that said
the riots, which often began during PPP campaigning, had been
instigated "by professionals". He did not elaborate.

"The facts gathered by the party indicate that there have been
efforts to tarnish the PPP's image, and create the impression
that PPP campaigning was identical to brutality," said the
statement signed by chairman Ismail Hasan Metareum and secretary-
general Tosari Widjaja.

Political observer Imam Utomo, also of Semarang's Diponegoro
University, said a third party was involved in the riots.

"The recent riots were organized by a well-managed
organization, whose aim is to disrupt the general elections," he
said.

Another political observer, Suhardiman, called on the public
to beware of greater riots tomorrow, on election day Thursday and
during and after ballot counting from May 30 until June 17, 1997.

"There are frustrated groups in society, called the Rainbow
Coalition, who still want to disrupt the general election,"
Suhardiman, deputy chairman of the Supreme Advisory Council, said
in Jakarta.

He urged the Armed Forces to take firm action against rioters
during the danger periods.

"The general election involves the nation's dignity. The Armed
Forces should maintain the motto 'to kill or be killed'," he
said. (har/imn)