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)