Indonesia has defended its bloody crackdown on protesters seeking higher compensation for land on Bintan Island, where Singaporeans hold the lion’s share of investments, reports said yesterday. “I am very sad by the turn of events,” the head of the Bintan District Assembly, Mr Huzrin Hood, was quoted as saying in Singapore’s Straits Times daily. “But if nothing was done, there will be problems for Bintan in the long run.”         
    Bintan, about 50 kilometers east of Singapore, is a popular weekend resort for Singaporeans, who also hold the majority of the $S1.35 billion ($1.23 billion) in investments there. In a pre-dawn operation on Sunday, Indonesian troops moved in to quell nearly a week of protests outside the Bintan Beach International Resort by about 200 disgruntled villagers. At least 13 people were injured, four of them seriously, and more than 70 people arrested in the 45-minute operation, according to the Straits Times. Three of the injured were said to have gunshot wounds in the chest and stomach. The report said the arrested were blindfolded and tied up before being put into a speedboat and brought to a police station in Tanjung Pinang, south of Bintan island. Eight of 12 student leaders fighting for the villagers’ rights were also held in the operation.          
    The villagers had set up a blockade and camped at a road leading to the Bintan Beach International Resort, demanding additional compensation for the land they sold for the resort and an industrial estate managed by a unit of Singapore conglomerate  Indonesia . Armed with knives and spears, they had last week seized a power plant of the Bintan Industrial Estate, severing electricity and water supply to the 27 factories there. They left the plant after being given assurances their demands would be looked into.          
    Indonesia’s President Abdurrahman Wahid had cancelled at the last minute a planned meeting yesterday with representatives of the protesters, who declined to relent. Singapore’s Prime Minister, Mr. Goh Chok Tong, also expressed regret over the protests and appealed to Indonesia to protect foreign investors in Bintan. 『Mr. Hood said the Indonesian Government had no choice but to act, because the villagers kept on rejecting its proposals for an end to the blockade.』① He would go to Jakarta this week to meet senior central Government officials to help resolve the problems faced by the villagers, he said. “There are many of them still out there, and if they are still unhappy they can cause problems for Bintan in the future.”