Tasikmalaya riot

Tasikmalaya riot

From Suara Karya

The recent Tasikmalaya riot has cause great concern. A small
matter which should have been settled amicably turned into a
tragedy that inflicted huge material losses.

Imagine, a number of shops and factories were damaged, leaving
hundreds of workers laid off. These workers are ordinary people
who need their jobs to live. Who is held responsible for the
incident? The angry masses, or the police?

I have a nagging question. How could such a large group of
people come together within such a short period of time and move
to wreck everything in their way? Such a thing would not have
happened if there had been no one to organize the action. The mob
must have consisted of people who had no jobs because it would be
extremely difficult to make working people, thousands in number,
to come together within minutes and start to damage public
properties.

The Constitution guarantees the right of employment for every
citizen. I wonder whether this is the case in reality. I am sure
that if every citizen had been employed, such incidents as the
July 27, Situbondo, and Tasikmalaya riots would not have taken
place.

AGUS CHAIRUDIN

Jakarta