Maoist groups behind riots, says Soeharto
JAKARTA (JP): President Soeharto said yesterday small groups of Maoist activists were behind the riots that rocked the country recently.
"They are applying the Mao Zedong theory in which they (seek to) control villages and then cities," Soeharto told some 70 leaders and managers of Islamic boarding schools' cooperatives.
"They do not just dominate the villages to seize power. These troublemakers mess the villages up first and then continue their disturbance into the city," he said.
He pointed out that these groups were trying to change the state's foundations, to replace the state ideology Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution.
The five-tenet Pancasila promotes belief in one God, humanity, national unity, democracy through deliberation and consensus, and social justice.
Soeharto said these groups exerted every effort and used every resource available to reach their goals.
"Because they are small, they have used every chance to exaggerate issues such as disparities, corruption and illegal levies," Soeharto said.
By raising such issues, they hoped to strain relations between the community and the government so they could exert their will, he said. "Members of Islamic boarding schools should thus be on the alert for these small irresponsible groups," he said, citing as an example the recent riot in the West Java town of Tasikmalaya.
The head of state also said the riots in Tasikmalaya and other towns in the country had been used by irresponsible people like "hoodlums" and other criminals.
Soeharto said an "alert command center" would be set up to tackle other forms of violence.
"If you sense something, quick, tell the centers. Let the centers investigate the agitators," he said.
"Those people want to disrupt stability," he said. "Our development is based on stability. Without national stability there will be no development. Without development there will be no growth. Without growth there will be no parity."
Before Soeharto, military and civilian leaders have said the recent riots were started by "intellectual actors" who were members of unnamed groups or "formless organizations" -- a government code word for members of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).
There have been three major ethnic and religious riots in Indonesia in the last three months; they occurred respectively on Oct. 10 in the East Java town of Situbondo, on Dec. 26 in Tasikmalaya and earlier this month in Sanggau Ledo, Sambas, West Kalimantan.
The first of the riots claimed five lives, the second four lives, and the most recent in Sanggau Ledo killed five.
Lt. Gen. Syarwan Hamid, chief of the Armed Forces' Sociopolitical Affairs, denied Thursday accusations that the army had provoked the ethnic and religious riots.
Indonesia views communism as a major threat to the nation's stability. In 1965, the PKI staged a bloody coup that killed several army generals. It was the party's second attempt after the communist rebellion in 1948. The PKI had close links with its comrades in China.
Also yesterday, Soeharto urged the management of Islamic boarding schools to encourage their cooperatives to establish closer ties.
"The cooperatives of the pesantren should foster closer relations," he said, adding that cooperatives should buy goods from wholesale markets instead of common stores to take advantage of the cheaper prices.
The meeting was also attended by the general chairman of the major Islamic organization Nahdlatul Ulama's law-making body, Ilyas Ruchiyat, also a member of the supervisory body of the Cipasung Islamic boarding school in Tasikmalaya. (35)