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Wahid Announces Trip To East Java Stronghold As Supporters Riot
LAMONGAN, Indonesia, Feb 8 (News Agencies) - Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid said on Thursday he would travel to his East Java stronghold on Friday as police again fired warning shots to disperse thousands of loyalists rioting there.
Police shot blanks at a mob in this East Java town of Lamongan when it tried to smash its way into the local office of the former ruling Golkar party with rocks, police Chief Commissioner Sudarsono said.
"Two policemen were slightly injured and 21 civilians," Sudarsono said, adding all 23 had been taken to hospital.
He said stones hurled by the protestors hit police, injuring them, while others were injured in clashes with the police, or were trampled while fleeing warning shots.
In a second incident in Sampang town, on Madura island off the coast of East Java, dozens of pro-Wahid supporters smashed the windows of a two-story Golkar party headquarters and set it ablaze late Thursday afternoon, a policeman there said.
The policeman, who refused to give his name, said Golkar officials fled the office before the mob arrived, and said the fire had engulfed the first floor of the building.
Lamongan lies 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the provincial capital of Surabaya, the country's second largest city.
Police in Surabaya estimated the number of protestors in Lamongan at 10,000.
It was the second time in two days that police have been forced to open fire on Wahid's unruly supporters in East Java, and the sixth consecutive day of violent protests which have included arson, violence and attacks on journalists.
The loyalists, most of them members of the 40-million-strong Muslim Nahdlatul Ulama (NU) organization that Wahid once headed, are angered over moves in the national parliament in Jakarta to unseat the president.
Golkar was one of the factions in the parliament that advocated a censure motion against Wahid last week for his alleged role in two corruption scandals totaling almost $6 million.
In Jakarta, Wahid's spokesman said the president would visit the coastal town of Pasuruan, 60 kilometers (37 miles) southeast of Surabaya, on Friday.
"The president and his entourage will be leaving for Pasuruan on Friday. Pasuruan is a good choice because it's the base of support for [Wahid]," presidential spokesman Wimar Witoelar said.
"He wants to meet people who are honestly in support for him. He wants to make sure that his followers are conducting things in peaceful manner," Witoelar added.
Jakarta MPs have been trying to force an emergency session of the national assembly to impeach Wahid, Indonesia's first democratically elected leader
Under the constitution, Wahid must be given up to four months to respond to a censure memorandum issued by the parliament last week, before a special impeachment session can be convened.
In Jakarta, concern is growing over Wahid's failure to halt violence in East Java.
"His attitudes and statements do not reflect concern. He even tends to blame [the parliament]," Golkar chairman Akbar Tanjung was quoted as saying by the Detikcom news website.
MP Yasril Ananta Baharuddin urged Wahid to make an unequivocal statement "because it's his supporters who are rioting and creating anarchy."
"They [the government] are the string-pullers of the riots, so they must take responsibility, because this can spread beyond East Java," Baharuddin said.
Even the president's brother, NU board member Salahudin Wahid, urged Wahid to "firmly...forbid such actions."
A defiant Wahid on Wednesday called the violence a lesson in democracy and shrugged off growing efforts by the national parliament to unseat him as "fruitless."
"This is the price we have to pay for the continuing process of democracy," he said.
In contrast to the East Java violence, Jakarta saw only two small peaceful student protests, in one of which police were seen dancing with anti-Wahid students in the rain in front of the presidential palace.
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