West Java court sends 21 to jail for January riots

JAKARTA (JP): A West Java district court has given 21 people prison sentences of two to four months over the riot in Rengasdengklok, Karawang regency, in January.

The Karawang District Court acquitted five others Saturday, Antara reported yesterday.

In a four-hour, tightly-guarded session, presiding judge Farida Syarif read out a one-page handwritten verdict which said that the 21 defendants' time in custody will be subtracted from their sentences.

She said the defendants were redeemed by their remorse over their involvement in the ethnic and sectarian violence.

Thousands of locals went on a burning and looting rampage which was sparked by an argument between a group of Moslem youths and a local woman of Chinese descent.

There were no fatalities, but the mob destroyed 76 houses and 72 shops. Nineteen cars were damaged and seven other vehicles burned.

The rioters burnt a church and damaged three others. Two Buddhist monasteries were also burned and vandalized.

Ota, 15, Ilyas, 13, Kamaludin, 20, Taufik, 20, and Dadang Iskandar, 17, were acquitted by the court. The five, who had spent two months and 17 days in detention, would be "returned to their parents", the judge said.

Several weeks ago, the court sentenced the local woman at the center of the violence, Tjio Kim Tjon, alias Candradinata, 55, to three years and six months in prison for "instigating the riot" during the Moslem fasting month of Ramadhan.

The unrest began when Tjio quarreled with youths who were noisily waking up Moslem residents for the predawn meal (sahur) -- before fasting all day -- at around 2:30 a.m.

The 49-year-old woman shouted at the youths, a fierce quarrel erupted and then she and the youths hurled stones at each other. Several hours later about 100 youths and other locals attacked the woman's house. Their number swelled to around 3,000.

The riot in Rengasdengklok was one of several ethnic, sectarian and politically-motivated riots that have rocked the country since last year. The biggest incident of rioting, burning and rampaging was in Jakarta on July 27 last year after the forced takeover of the disputed headquarters of the Indonesian Democratic Party.

Late last year, a sectarian riot in Situbondo, East Java, caused the death of five people. A riot in Tasikmalaya, West Java, then left four dead.

In subdistricts of West Kalimantan, a small incident between native Dayaks and migrant Madurese became a protracted, full- blown conflict that killed at least 300 people in late 1996 and early this year.

Bambang W. Soeharto of the National Commission on Human Rights has identified several factors, including social inequity and a lack of judicial certainty, as causing the unrest.

"This is a saddening development," he told a seminar on nationalism in Surabaya on Saturday.

In Jakarta, once student activist and former minister Cosmas Batubara said that political tension, including violence, always grew before general elections.

"The problem is whether we have sufficient self-control," Batubara said after a mass held by members of the Jakarta chapter of the Catholic Union of University Students.

He blamed the recent violence on people's lack of self- control. (swe/nur/06)