The following messages were posted in the CNN Discussion Boards

This is not some head-up-my-backside economic theory - this is reality. I think it's important that everyone knows what's going on right now in Palembang, South Sumatra.

Ethnic Chinese homes are being looted and burnt down by mobs and the young women forced to strip naked and are then gang raped in front of their own parents and a crowd of on-lookers, including women wearing the jilbab.

Chinese women are scared to leave their houses for fear of being raped. These attacks are becoming an almost daily occurance.

Chinese people who live on the Jl. Veteran are being forced to put down Moslem prayer mats (tikar sumbahyang) in front of their own houses.

As a pribumi, I feel deeply ashamed of my fellow Indonesians. I don't care how desperate, frustrated or poverty-striken you are, there is no possible justification or excuse for this kind of behaviour. It seems like our country is edging towards a Yugoslavia type scenario. How about if the tables were turned, and pribumi were in the minority? Being attacked as the Chinese are now experiencing?

Don't let it go any further. All this abstract pseudo-intellectual nonsense doesn't help anyone or change anything. You can carry on talking like that until the year 3000 without it having any effect. Most people in Indonesia have very simple lives and they need simple solutions. The changes that need to be made are also very simple. If people follow universal codes of decency and humanity then we can find these solutions.

If a house has been rotting and collapsing for years and years, we don't need to argue about the colour of the curtains. Get real!!!

I just wanted to point out a lesson we could learn from another country's history, namely that of Uganda.

Like much of East Africa, Uganda was under British colonial occupation. The British brought Indians in from their colony there, and gave them much the same position in East Africa as the Dutch gave the Chinese in Indonesia.

Of course, there were tensions between the native Ugandans and the Indian immigrants. When the infamous army leader, Idi Amin, took power in a coup d'etat, he made use of this resentment. He stoked up the population with speeches condemning the Indians' domination of the Ugandan economy. Indian citizens were terrorized and eventually mass deportations followed.

Shortly after the departure of the Ugandan Indians, the Ugandan economy collapsed.

Thirty years on, and the Ugandan Prime Minister recently visited the largest Hindu temple of the Ugandan Indian community in London. He asked them very politely if they would like to return to his country where he promised they would be allowed to live in peace. For those who weren't interested in returning, he promised that any investments they wished to make in his country's economy would be safe.

Let us not make the same mistake as misguided extremists like Amin. The German Nazi's in the Second World War took the same kind of thinking to its awful conclusion.

One of the main reasons why the European Jews became so successful in business was that they were not allowed to enter other professions, much like the Indonesian ethnic Chinese.

If the Indonesian Chinese are too dominant in our economy, let us take measures to help Pribumis to succeed in business and, in turn, open up other areas of society to the Chinese. Let them attend state universities. Let them make careers in the army, in politics, in the legal professions and in the civil service. Remove the discriminatory laws against Chinese characters etc. These are some first steps to restoring equality in our society. If an ethnic minority can survive despite discrimination, they should be admired and learned from, not exterminated.

Of course, I'm not denying that there are plenty of corrupt, selfish, ethnic Chinese in this country. But can anyone deny that they work hand-in-hand with corrupt, selfish Pribumi?

Let us try and convict these criminals in a court of law and punish them in a civilised manner like any other criminal. Lynch mobs are not the answer.

The kind of barbarity which is going on now is destroying the soul of Indonesia.

There is no such thing as an Indonesian Indonesia. Since we won our independence from the Dutch, Indonesia included all those people living between Sabang and Marauke. Batak, Ambonese, Javanese, Palembangnese, Padangnese, Chinese, Irian. Shall I go on. How can any one of these groups claim to be the 'real' Indonesians?

In the Indonesian constitution of 1945, five religions were recognized along with other beliefs.

You are Indonesian and have the same rights as anyone else to let the rest of us know what's going on. Don't ever feel intimidated to tell the truth. Too many people have kept silent in this country for too long.

Don't ever think that you are alone in your awareness of the plight of the ethnic Chinese. There are people out there, including moderates of the Islamic faith, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists and other beliefs, who empathise with those who are suffering from racist attacks.

As a Pribumi, I want to apologise on behalf of my people for what some of them are doing now. I am devestated by it.