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