Indonesia: How to Riot Tactfully

"Do not throw bricks at property or people. Do not cause damage," lectured Indonesia's President Sukarno to a group of university students. It seemed a strange note to strike, in view of the fact that four times in the past three months Sukarno had permitted Indonesian mobs to storm USIS offices in Djakarta, Surabaya and Medan, smashing windows, ripping down American flags, burning thousands of books.

But sure enough, the latest mob of 500 Moslem students that roared up to U.S. Ambassador Howard Jones's residence last week in government trucks had not a brick in hand. Instead, the mobsters simply pushed through the gates into the compound and trampled the garden, then roamed through the official residence itself.

Bricks or no bricks, Washington had enough. The U.S. announced that it was closing down all five of its USIS libraries in Indonesia, noting that it was the first time in its twelve years of operation in some 100 nations around the world that a local government's hostility had forced a withdrawal.