MUZI - Lateline News

MANILA - Chinese-Filipino students and their teachers slammed Tuesday human rights

violations against Chinese-Indonesians in Indonesia.

Some 500 students and teachers formed a picket outside the historic Manila Hotel, where Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas and his colleagues from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are holding their annual dialogue with their counterparts from developed countries.

Carrying placards reading, ''We condemn Suharto, Habibie governments for massacre and rapes,'' ''No to Hitlerism,'' and ''Secretary Albright, UN, no double standards on human rights,'' the group said they had been shocked at the treatment of Chinese-Indonesians during the recent riots in Indonesia.

''We are protesting the brutality of Indonesia and the human rights violations perpetrated on its citizens of Chinese descent,'' Margarita Gutierrez, principal of the Philippine San Bin School, said.

''The Indonesian government has done nothing to protect ethnic Chinese,'' she said.

Kendrick Co, a high school student of the Philippine Academy of Sakya, said they were protesting injustices against Chinese-Indonesians because ''we feel an affinity with them even if we have no relatives in Indonesia.''

Divina Gracia Gaspar, a teacher at Co's school, said, ''We are shocked by the brutal rape of Chinese women in Indonesia.''

Chinese-Indonesians were targeted during the riots in Indonesia. According to a prominent Indonesian human rights organization, 20 people died after being raped in the mid-May riots that ravaged the capital Jakarta and other cities.

Many non-Chinese Indonesians, hurting from the economic crisis, vented their ire not on the government, but on their ethnic Chinese countrymen. [Kyodo]