5/18/98

Local man saw Jakarta riots happen

By Genna McLaughlin

TRIBUNE-REVIEW

The restaurant where Paul Blair and his wife ate dinner in downtown Jakarta last week is now nothing but a gutted carcass on a street lined with burned vehicles and broken storefront windows.

What's left of the 10-story building sits in the Chinese business district of Jakarta - in the heart of the rioting and looting that began in the Indonesian capital Thursday.

Blair, a native of Pittsburgh with relatives in Greensburg, and his wife, Yessy, a native of Indonesia, traveled from central Jakarta 12 miles to north Jakarta Saturday to join "throngs of people" surveying the damage left by the rioting that quieted early Saturday.

"There were a lot of people," said Blair from his home in the capital early today. "I think people were relieved to just get out ... to be reassured that everything is OK."

As shop owners measured for new windows and workers swept streets, people took motors and metal from the many burned cars that sat empty along the street.

Some of the unharmed businesses still bore signs that read "Indigenous-owned" or "A Muslim Property" - signs that Blair said were attempts to divert attention to neighboring Chinese-owned shops.

During his 10 years in Jakarta, Blair, a former University of Pittsburgh student, said he has not witnessed anything like it. "Not here, not anywhere."

The looting began amid citizen demonstrations asking for the replacement of Indonesian President Suharto. The riots did not affect the "legitimate Replace Suharto Movement," according to Blair, and only left people in the city "disgusted."

"It appeared to be a totally unorganized mob of high school-age kids taking advantage of a precarious situation," said Blair, who learned through news reports that most of the more than 200 people who died in the rioting were looters.

During the rioting, the 56-year-old free-lance writer kept in touch with his sister and brother-in-law, Carole and Wiley Hartman of Greensburg, via e-mail.

On Saturday morning he wrote about the bodies found in one department store in east Jakarta. "It turns out that nearly all those trapped on the upper levels were teen-agers so intent on grabbing everything in sight that they didn't notice their friends on the ground floor had already torched the place. News reports say that many of the charred bodies were found clutching various items they fancied."

Although he and his wife never felt endangered, Blair witnessed destruction as close as a half-mile from his home.

Confident the worst is over, Blair said the only result of the carnage was to "reinforce the country's feeling that they don't want this kind of rioting again."