Human Rights Watch strongly protests the eight-year sentence handed down on December 18 to Indonesian human rights activist Agustiana bin Suryana after he was convicted of subversion by a court in Tasikmalaya, West Java. Agustiana, thirty-two, a former economics student, was charged with being the intellectual mastermind behind riots in Tasikmalaya in December 1996, involving mostly Muslim youth, that left four dead and over a hundred buildings destroyed or damaged, including eleven churches. The riots stemmed from a protest over the torture of Muslim teachers by the Tasikmalaya police after the son of a local police officer was punished at a Muslim school.

The prosecution had scant evidence against Agustiana, who was detained on January 8 and held at two different hotels under military guard and without access to a lawyer, in clear violation of Indonesia's criminal procedure code, until January 31, when he was formally detained by the Attorney General's office and moved to a detention facility in Ciamis, West Java. (The actual detention order is dated January 29.) He was not in Tasikmalaya on the day of the riot, and it appeared that the prosecution based the charges on the fact that Agustiana since 1993 had helped organize demonstrations by farmers and workers over land disputes and wage issues respectively. At the time of his arrest, Agustiana was also a secretary-general of an opposition political party, the Indonesian Democratic Union Party (Partai Uni Demokrasi Indonesia or PUDI), established in violation of Indonesia's restrictive laws on political organizations by Sri Bintang Pamungkas, a former parliamentarian who himself is in prison on subversion charges for his role in PUDI.

"This verdict is evidence of both a search for an easy scapegoat for Indonesia's increasing communal tensions and a vindictiveness on the part of the government toward the activist community," said Sidney Jones, director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch. "It also represents an increase in the use of the draconian anti-subversion law after a period when we thought it was going into decline."

The prosecution charged that Agustiana's anti-government activities went back to 1993 when he founded the Garut Youth and Students Forum (Forum Pemuda Pelajar Mahasiswa Garut or FPPMG) and had organized high school and university students, students in Muslim boarding schools (pesantren), workers, and farmers to undermine the government and economic assets of Indonesia. He also founded an organization the same year called the Union of People's Solidarity (Serikat Pendamping Rakyat) aimed, the prosecution said, at changing the political system. In this capacity, he had frequent contact with other nongovernmental advocacy groups, including the independent labor union, SBSI, and the now-banned militant student organization, the People's Democratic Party (Parti Rakyat Demokratik). He was accused of having particular influence over another youth named Mimih Haeruman, a member of the Indonesian Islamic Students' Movement (Pergerakan Mahasiswa Islam Indonesia or PMII) who founded a forum for students in Tasikmalaya that in form and activities was "virtually identical" to the Garut group. Mimih, charged with instigating the violence that took place during the December 1996 riots, was tried in absentia on subversion charges and on November 20 sentenced to ten years' in prison; he remained at large as of December 1997.

According to the charge-sheet, Mimih received information about the torture of the Muslim teachers on December 23 and immediately informed other members of PMII in Garut. Mimih then met with Agustiana to discuss a strategy for staging a demonstration to protest the abuse. On December 24, the prosecution said, there were further discussions about the case among members of PMII and the Garut students' forum, and, by telephone, with Sri Bintang Pamungkas of PUDI. On December 25, Agustiana went to Garut with another NGO activist where he is accused of meeting other PMII and forum activists, again to discuss a response to the torture. One result of these meetings was the drafting of a statement entitled "Solidarity of the Muslims of Tasikmalaya Against Torture." According to the prosecution, Mimih told members of the Tasikmalaya student forum members that Agustiana had his Garut followers ready to support any action in Tasikmalaya. On December 26, Mimih gave an emotional speech at a mosque in Tasikmalaya, the result of which was a mass march toward the Tasikmalaya police headquarters, another inflammatory speech there by Mimih urging those present to wage a jihad or holy war for Islam. It was at that point that the thousands present took to the streets in what eventually turned into a riot with an anti-Christian, anti-Chinese cast. Agustiana was then charged with holding a meeting later on December 26 in Garut to assess the the progress of the protest.

It was clear from the way the charge-sheet was written that Agustiana's earlier experience in organizing protests was a major factor against him. (He had led demonstrations over the years not only in support of farmers whose land was expropriated for golf courses and commercial ventures but also in support of Bosnia, against a national lottery, against the invasion of Iraq by the U.S., in protest over the escape of the embezzler Eddy Tanzil in Jakarta, and against the press licensing law.)

On the day of the riot, in fact, Agustiana and other FPPMG activists were in Garut preparing to go to the field for several days in the coastal fishing village of Pameungpeuk south of Garut. On December 29, police intelligence from Garut visited them in the village, saying they were looking for the "brains behind the riots." These officials continued to harrass them, without making arrests, until the FPPMG program was completed on December 31.

On January 8, Agustiana was detained by security officials who only identified themselves as "Sumatra 37."A warrant from the Tasikmalaya Attorney General's Department arrived on the same day summoning Agustiana for interrogation but not stating that he would be detained. Agustiana was initially kept kept under house arrest in his mother's house in Tasikmalaya. On January 12, he was moved to a Tasikmalaya hotel, Hotel Abadi, where a guard shared the room with him while more guards rented the rooms on either side. When friends from FPPMG came to the hotel to inquire after him they were immediately interrogated. At the same time, the Tasikmalaya's Attorney General's Department denied that Agustiana was in detention. On January 27, he was moved to the Yudha Negara Hotel. He told his lawyer, Effendi Saman of Bandung, that he had not been tortured physically.

The trouble in Tasikmalaya began with the disciplining of a student at the the Riyadhul Ulum pesantren in Condong, about six kilometers to the east of Tasikmalaya. On December 19, Rizal, a fourteen-year-old student, was caught in a petty theft and was punished by having to stand in knee-deep water in a fishpond. Rizal's father was a police officer in Tasikmalaya, Corporal Nursamsi. His father took exception to this punishment and came to visit the pesantren to speak with its leaders the next day. On December 21, Tasikmalaya police summoned two members of the Condong pesantren in their mid-twenties, Habib Hamdani Ali (the teacher who had punished Rizal), and Ihsan, for further interrogation.The summons was not signed by the local police chief, as it should have been. Presumably to protect their younger colleagues, the pesantren's two senior teachers, K.H. Makmun, seventy-four, and his son, Mahmud Farid, thirty-eight, reported to the police instead. But they were told the police wanted to speak with Habib and Ihsan. On December 23, Habib and Ihsan reported to the police, in the company of Mahmud Farid and pesantren member Ate Musodiq. Upon arrival, Habib was immediately pulled by the hair and beaten by Nursamsi and several other policemen. When Mahmud tried to intervene he was also beaten, as was Ihsan.They were taken inside and told to do pushups while being beaten at the same time. Ate Musodiq meanwhile managed to escape and report the beating. When the deputy district head of Tasikmalaya sent his officers to intervene at about midday, the beating stopped. Police then resumed the interrogation. But Mahmud soon had to be taken to hospital unable to walk unassisted, complaining of cigarette burns on his chest and pain in his ribs. Within a few hours news of the beating had spread, and soon the victim was receiving so many visitors at the Tasikmalaya General Hospital that he was sent home.

On December 25 rumors circulated that Mahmud, or even his old father Makmun, had died. The rumors were false. Students of the Condong pesantren were forbidden to go out on the streets, but many other Islamic students were ready to vent their anger. Tattooed youths who often operate as paid thugs reportedly were also ready to act.

The police commander Lt-Col Suherman, correctly fearing a backlash, immediately went to the Condong pesantren and agreed he would punish the police officers involved, if the religious teachers would keep their students under control. He ordered four police accused of torturing the religious teachers to be arrested by military police. The four were then dishonourably dismissed from the police force on January 9, even before judicial proceedings against them had commenced.

Activists from a variety of student and youth groups in the Tasikmalaya area had already begun planning a protest rally in the form of a communal prayer meeting (istighosah). They began to plan it after it became clear that hundreds of pesantren students were ready to march on the local police headquarters. Fearing a violent confrontation, student and youth leaders urged the formation of a committee of representatives to hold a prayer meeting instead, as a more constructive forum for channeling grievances.

Among the groups represented at preliminary discussions were the Tasikmalaya branch of the Indonesian Islamic Student Movement PMII (through its chairman Abdul Muis, who later visited Tasikmalaya pesantren to pass out invitations), the Garut branch of PMII(Mimih Haeruman, also known as Mimih Suherman), the Tasikmalaya branch of the Islamic Students Association HMI, the Bandung branch of HMI (I'ip Syamsul Ma'arif), Siliwangi Youth (Angkatan Muda Siliwangi, related to the Siliwangi military division), and student senates from various colleges including Siliwangi University in Tasikmalaya, the Garut Law School (STHG), and the Cipasung Islamic Institute IAIC.

On December 26 crowds starting arriving early at Tasikmalaya's main mosque, Mesjid Agung, for the prayer service, which commenced at about 9:00 am. Pamphlets had been distributed advertising the meeting. The local military commander,Col. H M Yasin attended, as did the local police commander, Lt.Col. Suherman, and the district head.

By the time the meeting closed at 13:30, rioting had already broken out, after a large and increasingly agitated crowd outside the mosque had broken away earlier. When someone, later identified by some as Asep Ilyas, another man accused of subversion, had shouted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great!), the crowd was already on the move. They first confronted the district head and police chief at police headquarters, 200 meters from the mosque, throwing stones at them and the building, before spreading out in all directions to burn Chinese shops. Coming out of the mosque, Mimih, on the request of the military commander, stood on a statue and appealed to the crowd to stop rioting, but to no avail. Officials later estimated the crowd in Tasikmalaya at about 5,000, but other estimates were higher.

Local military and police units were inadequate to control the crowd. Indeed, police were too afraid of the crowd to face them in uniform for several days. Reinforcements did not arrive from Bandung until the late afternoon. Soldiers from Battalion 330 came from Bandung, about three to four hours drive to the northwest, from Battalion 323 in Majalengka to the north, from Battalion 301 in Sumedang, from Battalion 303 and 321, as well as some Kostrad Infantery Brigade 134 (Reserve Forces) and Arhanud, about 800 troops in all. They brought the situation under control by about 10:00 p.m. By this time, however, burning and looting was also taking place in other small towns in the vicinity of Tasikmalaya: Idihiang (northwest), Ciawi (further northwest), and Singaparna (west). In some of these places rioting again broke out the next day (Ciawi, and Sawalu, to the west). An eyewitness who asked to remain anonymous was struck by the calm and methodical approach of the rioters, saying they arrived from Tasikmalaya in a group of two trucks and about fifty motorcycles at exactly 10:00 p.m. as expected by forewarned locals. These locals identified buildings owned by Chinese. A truck would then ram down the front door, rioters would bring out the Chinese inside and deposit them at the local military post (Koramil) without hurting them. If the building was in a Chinese row, it was burned down after throwing in Molotov cocktails. If it stood among non-Chinese buildings, its contents were brought out onto the street to be burned, and the building was wrecked. Looting was rare, even though there were about a thousand onlookers.

Altogether 173 people were arrested, of whom some forty-five were tried for destroying public property. Officials said most of those arrested were caught looting and were unemployed or petty criminals. They specifically denied pesantren students were among those arrested. In fact the pesantren students among the original detainees were soon released, presumably to avoid further confrontation with the Islamic community. News agencies reported four deaths: two Chinese – Mrs Geok Wiwih and Eli Santoso – and two others who fell off rioters' trucks, one a seventeen-year-old youth. One police officer said five had died. Fifteen were reported injured, many of them rioters struck by rocks thrown by other rioters.

Officials early in February estimated over a hundred buildings were burned down or seriously damaged, including eighty-nine shops, eighteen police stations and police posts, sixteen offices, one Christian school, eleven churches, four banks, three hotels, 114 cars and trucks, and twenty-two motorcycles. The churches were of several denominations, Catholic, Protestant and Pentecostal. They were not only Chinese; one was a church of the Batak (an ethnic group in Sumatra); the Pasundan church is Sundanese, the dominant ethnic group in West Java. Most of the damage was in Tasikmalaya; one Catholic church was in Ciawi. Damage was estimated at Rp. 85 billion (US$40 million).