MUZI - Lateline News

HONG KONG, - Hong Kong's leading democrat Martin Lee has urged the presidents of the United States and Indonesia to ensure Jakarta repudiates the racism that sparked violence against Indonesia's ethnic Chinese during riots in May.

Lee made the appeal amid growing fears that a fresh wave of racist violence might break out in the southeast Asian country in the weeks ahead.

``The severity of these two days of mayhem has evoked comparisons to the Nazi regime's attacks against Jews,'' Lee said of the May riots in a July 23 letter to Indonesian President B.J. Habibie.

The letter was obtained by Reuters on Saturday.

The worst rioting occurred in Jakarta, where almost 1,200 people were killed and the city's Chinatown district scarred by looting and arson attacks on hundreds of shops and buildings.

``Ethnic Chinese Indonesians have been the target of sprees of rape, arson, and looting,'' Lee, who is chairman of the Democratic Party and a Hong Kong legislator, said in his letter.

``Thousands of ethnic Chinese Indonesian women have been gang-raped, often in the presence of their own family members,'' he added. Most were too scared to make official reports to the police, he said.

There were indications that the attacks were ``carefully planned and executed, likely with the approval of some element of the old regime, and the military,'' he wrote.

Indonesian officials were not immediately available to comment on Lee's letter.

Human rights groups say scores of ethnic Chinese women were systematically raped during the riots.

Lee urged Habibie to allow independent investigations of the atrocities, prosecute those responsible and disavow the racism that inspired the violence.

Lee asked U.S. President Bill Clinton in a similar letter to press Indonesia's government to prevent racist violence.

Worries over the safety of ethnic Chinese in the southeast Asian country have surged in Hong Kong this week.

Hong Kong's half-million-strong overseas Chinese population, half of whom are Indonesian Chinese, are concerned by rumours that violence could be renewed on July 27, the second anniversary of a police raid on offices of opposition figure Megawati Sukarnoputri, and on August 17, Indonesia's Independence Day.

Flyers calling for violence against the ethnic Chinese minority have been circulating in Bandung, Java, this week.

Lee's Democratic Party plans to hold a candlelight vigil on Sunday night for the victims of the racist violence.

An overseas Chinese group and a pro-Beijing political party have announced plans for a joint demonstration to protest the violence to ethnic Chinese in Indonesia. [Reuters]