Golkar to hold Christmas party

JAKARTA: Some 5,000 Golkar members will attend a Christmas celebration at the Senayan tennis center on Dec. 14, Antara reported yesterday.

Chairman Harmoko will open the planned-to-be-lavish event. "This year, the celebration will be held on a large scale to greet the approaching 1997 general election and the 1998 session of the People's Consultative Assembly," the agency quoted an organizer as saying.

Christian leader Jan Riberu and scholar Victor I. Tanja agreed yesterday that religious tension in various parts of the country was mostly prompted by social and economic disparities rather than religious hatred.

"Eruptions of violence occurred more because of uncontrollable emotional outbursts," Jan Riberu said.

Tanja referred to the August violence in Situbondo, East Java, in which dozens of churches were set ablaze and five people died.

"That tragedy happened because there were people who claimed to be religious but used religion for their own interests, that case was not a conflict between Moslems and Christians, or Hindu with Buddhist people," he said. (swe)