The riots in Jakarta 13-15 May were probably the worst Indonesia has ever seen. In proportion almost equally devastating riots took place in Medan and surrounds (4-5 May), Palembang (13 May), and Solo and surrounds (14-15 May, with at least 19 dead). When President Suharto resigned, these events were somewhat overshadowed in the media. But they deserve much more attention, if only because they were so destructive. At the moment we have only sketchy Indonesian language newspaper reports. I have not had the opportunity to study even these in detail.

Jakarta's death toll was initially put at 499 (army spokesperson, 17 May), then at 293 (police spokesperson, 23 May). A team led by the well-known Jesuit Sandyawan Sumardi said on 18 May that 1188 had died in Jakarta and Tangerang, including deaths by shooting and beating. The same report also mentioned Chinese being stripped and raped by rioters. Most deaths were of looters trapped in burning supermarkets.

Coordinating Minister for Finance and Economy Ginanjar Kartasasmita on about 18 May put the damage in Jakarta at Rp 2.5 trillion (about US$ 250 million at prevailing rates). He said 2479 shop-houses had been damaged or destroyed mostly by fire. (The shop-house is the typical, small, almost invariably Chinese, retail business upon which urban society depends). In addition he listed 1026 ordinary houses, 1604 shops, 383 private offices, 65 bank offices, 45 workshops, 40 shopping malls, 13 markets, 12 hotels, 24 restaurants, 11 parks, 9 petrol stations, 11 police posts. Then there were 1119 cars, 821 motorcycles, 8 buses, 486 traffic signs and lights. The police later (22/5) gave considerably lower figures: 1344 buildings of all kinds, 1009 cars, 205 motorcycles.

Dr Chris Manning, an economist and population expert at ANU, told a seminar in Canberra on 27 May that as many as 20-30,000 Chinese entrepreneurs may leave Indonesia permanently as a result of the riots in Jakarta and elsewhere. He pointed to the serious impact this would have on business in Indonesia.

This is destruction on a massive scale. Older people said it reminded them of the revolutionary interregnum in 1945 after the sudden end of Japanese control, the so-called 'bersiap' period. Citizens formed vigilante squads to defend their neighbourhoods.

Let's look at a map of Jakarta and see what happened. Immediate trigger for the Jakarta riot was the shooting of four students at the elite Trisakti University in Grogol, West Jakarta, on 12 May. The shootings shocked democracy activists around the country. They had been demonstrating persistently and entirely peacefully (with Medan as the only exception) for weeks against the Suharto government. After a commemorative ceremony at the campus ending late in the morning of Wednesday 12 May, rioting broke out around the campus. Some reports mention lots of angry shouts against the armed forces.

Rioters – the young urban poor, not students – spread out in several directions and start setting fire to car showrooms, hotels, shops, a hospital. The following important roads are mentioned: Kyai Tapi, Gajah Mada, Hayam Wuruk, Daan Mogot, Latumeten, Pesing, Cengkareng, Kedoya arterial, Kebon Jeruk, the Grogol-Kali Deres road, also Jalan Juanda behind the presidential palace, and the Cawang-Grogol flyover. Electronics shops in Glodok, the Chinatown of Jakarta, are looted. All shops in nearby Senen close down, and pretty soon all business and traffic in the entire city close down. There is also an angry demonstration in the elite business district of Jl Sudirman, a long way to the south of Grogol.

Rioting mostly spreads westward toward and into Tangerang – past the international airport. A hospital is attacked, as are two churches in Tangerang. Cars are stopped on tollways and checked for Chinese – many cars are put to the torch on the tollway, whose operators are soon told to abandon their post. Even though no one is collecting fees, the toll roads are soon deserted. Tens of thousands of rioters far outnumber the security forces, who mostly stay away from trouble rather than risk defeat or a bloody massacre.

The rich flee to luxury hotels at the airport, Jalan Thamrin in the city heart, in Jalan Sudirman and at Ancol.

Tangerang to Jakarta's west, like Bekasi to its east (where rioting breaks out the next day) is Jakarta's industrial belt. Hundreds of labour-intensive, temporary factories erected by foreign capital looking for cheap labour and a quick return on investment have become magnets for an urban proletariat. These are the people worst affected by the economic crisis – bearing the brunt of the huge increase in unemployment (an additional 13 million this year alone?).

Rioting goes on right throughout the night. The next day, Thursday 14 May, it continues in Hayam Wuruk and Gajah Mada, Jalan Samanhudi, Suryopranoto ('Krekot'), but spreads to many other areas of Jakarta than just West Jakarta where it had started. On this day the large malls seem to become particular targets – this is where many looters die when fires are lit and they are unable to escape. The worst is Yogya Plaza in Klender, East Jakarta, with 174 charred bodies recovered.

Places mentioned in the reports now range all over Jakarta: Kebayoran Lama-Cipulir-Cileduk, Jalan Kosambi Raya, Cengkareng Ring Road, Jalan Salemba, Jalan Sahari (including tycoon Liem Sioe Liong's house), Jalan Matraman, to the east of Freedom Square, up to Pluit and the Tanjung Priok harbour area, down to Tanah Abang, Senen, Cikini, and east to Kalimalang, Kranji, and Bekasi. There is even some in Depok in the south.

By Friday 15 May the city is exhausted but rioting continues in a new area: Cinere, near the elite Blok M area of South Jakarta. Actions on some toll roads continue – Kampung Rambutan-Cawang, Grogol-Kampung Rambutan. Mostly, Jakarta is counting its dead. Scavengers are having a field day with the rubble. Thousands mill around to observe the damage, leaving police edgy about the potential for more trouble. Over a thousand looters have been arrested in the later stages of the riots.

The rioters are the urban poor who have had no political representation in the New Order. They have almost no political leadership other than the sometimes agitational preaching in hundreds of small mosques. Yes, they are anti-Chinese. More generally they are alienated by the entire modern economy. They take it out on the inaccessible symbols of the new rich – banks, automatic teller machines, supermarkets, car showrooms, hotels, the cars of the Chinese. The retail revolution that is sweeping Indonesia has repeatedly angered those whose livelihoods remain dependent on more traditional markets, which were not nearly as badly affected.

Were the riots provoked? Perhaps. I know it would't be Indonesia without conspiracy theories aplenty. It takes more to convince me than it does some others that provocation is not a deep-seated urban myth. But this time I think there are some indications of deliberate manipulation by some within the security forces. In my opinion this may well have happened particularly on Thursday 14 May, when rioting spread from West Jakarta over the whole city and when the malls were targeted – pretty ambitious undertakings for young bloods.

There are some eyewitness references, for example in the Sandyawan report, of well-built men arriving in trucks at flash points and shouting loudly that Chinese shops should be burned.

Most evidence is circumstancial. Some observers point to the motive, often heard before, of deflecting crowd anger away from the armed forces (caused by the deaths of the students at Trisakti) towards the Chinese scapegoats.

Human Rights Watch Asia has established in a recent report (already distributed to the RRT) that a Chinese scapegoating discourse certainly exists among certain military officers. Its aim is usually to deflect anger away from the ruling elite (although in the past it has also served to cause difficulties for rivals within the elite responsible for security).

Last January I was not convinced that the elite anti-Chinese discourse could actually have affected events on the ground in the remote places where riots broke out, and I tended to play down its practical importance. But on 13 and 14 May the connection is more straightforward. These riots were politically charged in a way that the January riots in the regions were not. Tension was high among an elite painfully aware that Suharto's regime was crumbling.

The late general Soemitro and others have given detailed accounts of the way riots in Jakarta were manipulated under conditions of similar tension in January 1974. Allegations that LtGen Prabowo and his colleagues (Muchdi of Kopassus and Sjafrie Syamsuddin of the Jakarta Area Command) were involved in provocation seem to be convincing even to armed forces commander Gen Wiranto.

Gross irresponsibility such as this on the part of senior military officers of course runs clean counter to the normal military interest in stability. But I believe it is quite possible that in moments of dire emergency within the regime, in the absence of better ways of resolving internal conflict, short-term consideration may well over-ride the normal sense of responsibility. Conspiracy theories are of course difficult to prove. Yet much hangs on whether they are true or not. If true, then the Chinese minority has even less protection than that provided by a merely incompetent security apparatus.

[Gerry van Klinken, editor, 'Inside Indonesia' magazine. For Refugee Review Tribunal, May 29, 1998.]