Andreas Harsono, Jakarta – More than 200 Chinese-owned shops and dozens of vehicles were damaged in an riot which broke out in the capital of Indonesia's South Sulawesi province yesterday after an ethnic Chinese man hacked an indigenous Bugis girl to death with a machete.
Indonesian SCTV yesterday evening showed deserted streets in Ujung Pandang where Muslims had hurriedly painted Arabic words on their houses to prevent rioters damaging their buildings.
Police said no casualties had been reported during the riot but confirmed that hundreds of Chinese-owned buildings were burned down, including several supermarkets, entertainment centres, banks and luxurious houses.
"The Chinese man was beaten by the mob and rumours spread quickly throughout the city that a Chinese man had killed a girl who had just finished mengaji," said a military spokesman referring to the Muslim practice of reciting verses of the Koran in mosques.
Police and witnesses said the Chinese man was reportedly mentally retarded and on Monday used a machete to kill the nine-year-old girl, who was wearing a white Muslim headscarf.
The 24-year-old man reportedly wandered around the area for some hours holding the machete. When he saw the girl, he shouted that she was a white ghost before hacking her to death [see notes]. The man was then stoned and beaten by locals before being taken away by police. He died early yesterday morning in hospital. Between 300 and 400 Bugis people began to target Chinese-owned houses in the area on Monday night.
The riots broke out again yesterday morning when the Bugis people, who are mostly Muslims, began attacking Chinese-dominated business areas on the main streets of Masjid Raya, Veteran and Nusantara.
Among the damaged buildings were the Radisson Hotel, Bank Bali, Bank Central Asia and Primadonna entertainment centre.
Ujung Pandang Chief Police Col M Darus said the police had arrested dozens of rioters and had not received any reports of casualties. However, Darus admitted that the girl had died, two fire fighters had been hospitalised after being trapped in a burning building and nine rioters had been hospitalised after being shot by security personnel.
Local journalists said it was still too early to calculate the number of victims. One reporter of the Ujung Pandang-based Fajar daily told The Nation in a telephone interview last night that there have been rumours that five people were killed.
"It's still going on. We can see fires burning from here," she said. Ujung Pandang, which is in the southern part of Sulawesi island and is about a three-hour flight from Jakarta, is the biggest city in eastern Indonesia.
The reporter said the riots had reminded her of the 1979 anti-Chinese riots which resulted in the death of some students.
A human rights worker for the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation said police had arrested more than 70 rioters and most of the Chinese had left their houses and the city on Monday evening.
South Sulawesi Military Commander Maj Gen Agum Gumelar said military troops and police are guarding the streets of the port city and called for the people to be calm. "The people of South Sulawesi are harsh people but I know they are mature," he said.
[Since April, a number of night attacks have occurred against people suspected of being zombies (hantu pocong, the walking dead) in Central Java. Four people died in July and a number of others were hospitalised with serious injuries. Most of the victims have been vagrants, travelers or homeless people. On September 11, thousands surrounded a police station in Sragan demanding the release of two people who villages had arrested the previous night. When the police refused, they began wrecking the building and it was not until three hours later, when reinforcements arrived (and warning shots fired), that the crowd dispersed. Two other police stations have been damaged in similar circumstances - James Balowski]