Murders Indonesia

Carlos Caceres, a U.N. refugee worker in the West Timor town of Atambua, sent this e-mail to a colleague with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees early Wednesday. Pro-Indonesian militia members and supporters, angered by the death of a militia leader, killed Caceres, who was from Puerto Rico, and at least two other colleagues a short time later. "I was in the office when the news came out that a wave of violence would soon pound Atambua.

Clashes between Muslim and Christian gangs in eastern Indonesia left more than a dozen people dead. Mobs rampaged in Ambon, looting and setting ablaze dozens of shops in sectarian violence between Christian and Muslim residents, witnesses said. Police initially tried to disperse hundreds of looters by firing tear gas and warning shots into the air. But when the gangs--armed with rocks, machetes, lances, arrows and gasoline bombs--failed to scatter, officers were seen firing into the crowds.

The killing of black-magic sorcerers began in September, carried out by masked assassins dressed in black. Some victims were decapitated, others disemboweled. The assassins--called "ninjas" after the Japanese warriors of bygone days--worked silently, disappearing back into the night as quickly as they had come. In addition to those believed capable of supernatural hexing and healing, the victims have included Muslim clerics and ordinary farmers.

Mobs of poor, young Indonesians rampaged unchecked through downtown streets here Thursday, looting, burning and pushing this capital of 10 million to the edge of anarchy. They torched cars, banks and department stores, targeting businesses owned by ethnic Chinese and members of the ruling family. Plumes of smoke billowed over Jakarta from every direction.

The police killings of six young protesters at an elite private college has turned Trisakti University into the Kent State of Indonesia, giving students here a focus and a symbol in their cries for revolutionary change, if not revolution. "Something like this can be the embryo of real change," economics professor Avendi Simangunsong said Wednesday, as students wearing black armbands eulogized fallen friends and chanted for the end of President Suharto's 32-year rule.

The Clinton administration, battered and embarrassed by bloody repression in Indonesia, has begun increasing the pressure on President Suharto's regime, but it is not going so far as to threaten to withhold economic aid. The killings of six student demonstrators Tuesday provoked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to issue the strongest official U.S. condemnation of the repression and to call for meaningful political reform.

Six students were killed--shot in the back and head, doctors said--and about 20 were wounded Tuesday when police opened fire on protesters calling for the end of President Suharto's rule. It was the most serious incident since student demonstrations, most of them peaceful, began three months ago on campuses throughout Indonesia.

This is a story of how Washington deals with the Other Asia, the one often forgotten these days. It is a story of death and torture, of jungles, gold and the Washington bureaucracy. Americans are fascinated with modern Asia, the zippy world of cellular phones, business suits and discotheques. But on the margins, there are areas of the continent that are still part of the Third World.