E. Timor capital back to normal, 120 detained

DILI, East Timor (JP): The East Timor capital returned to normal yesterday after four days of rioting in which two people were killed and 12 people injured.

Chief of the Udayana Regional Military Command Maj. Gen. Abdul Rivai, who oversees security in Bali, Nusa Tenggara and East Timor, said more than 120 people had been arrested.

Offices, schools, shops reopened yesterday as tension from the bloody street brawls that flared through the city from Monday through Thursday receded.

Rivai said four of the 12 people injured in the flurry of incidents were members of the Armed Forces (ABRI).

Those arrested were mostly youths with crimes ranging from burning tires in the streets to extorting money from pedestrians, he said.

"We will determine the role that each of the arrested played, whether they were planners, rioters or anything else," Rivai said in a media briefing, where he was accompanied by chief of the East Timor military command, Col. Muhidin Simbolon.

Rivai denied the accusations that the military was slow in quelling the latest wave of violence. "We mean to act carefully in line with standard procedures," he said.

Separately, prominent legislator Manuel Viegas Carrascalao criticized the way the military handled the riots. He said that some military officers "intimidated" him for no reasons after he was trying to intervene in the fighting.

Carrascalao, who represents the ruling Golkar party, said he had received complaints that security officers messed up the belongings of suspects they arrested at their homes.

Rivai said the authorities in East Timor were studying the cause of the latest violence. "We will listen to those detained... we will tap as much information as possible why they went on the rampage," he said.

Earlier this week, East Timor Governor Abilio Jose Osorio Soares said the clashes involved anti-integration activists under Boby Xavier and a gang under Alexio Cobra.

Carrascalao's version goes that it was sparked by the arrest of Xavier. His angry supporters were met by pro-government East Timorese who were backed by the Armed Forces.

Meanwhile, in Yogyakarta, hundreds of the students of the State Institute of Islamic Studies (IAIN) demonstrated their anger at East Timor Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, whom they charged of having no respect for Moslems in East Timor.

The banner waving protesters branded Belo as "president of (East Timor's) rebels" and criticized non-governmental organizations for doing nothing to defend "oppressed" Moslems in East Timor.

The demonstration held after the Friday mass prayers was organized in connection with last month's religious and ethnic violence in Dili, which forced hundreds of mostly Moslem migrants to flee East Timor.

A number of mosques and Protestant churches were reportedly burnt down, vehicles vandalized, market places set ablaze and more than a dozen people arrested in the incidents that took place between Sept. 2 and 14. (pan/yac/02)