By Cindy Shiner
Special to The Washington Post
Saturday, February 14, 1998; Page A25

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Feb. 13—Rioters burned shops, set merchandise ablaze in the streets and ransacked a church today in some of the worst violence to hit Indonesia since an economic crisis gripped the country seven months ago.

News service reports said hundreds of residents in the towns of Pamanukan, Losari, Gebang, Jatiwangi, Ciasem, Tanjung and Bulukamba went on the rampage against high prices in the western region of the archipelago's main island of Java. Security forces broke up the mobs and were patrolling the streets. One person was reported killed, the official Antara news agency reported. Details of his death were not immediately available.

Inflation has soared and the value of the country's currency, the rupiah, has plummeted since the crisis began last July and the government of President Suharto began implementing economic reforms to meet the requirements of a $43-billion bailout by the International Monetary Fund.

Violence has erupted in as many as 15 Indonesian cities in the past couple of months. The latest rioting is likely to raise tension in the capital, Jakarta, because the towns that were hit today are closer to the city -- only an hour's drive away -- than others where violence has occurred. Most of the rioting had been confined to East and Central Java.

President Suharto on Thursday again ordered security forces to take tough action during protests and unrest. Police on Wednesday arrested more than 100 demonstrators in Jakarta who were marching peacefully to protest high prices.

Most of the shops attacked in the rioting belong to ethnic Chinese. Although they make up only three percent of the population they control most of the country's wealth and are resented by the increasingly cash-strapped populace.

There are growing concerns that the latest violence is taking on religious overtones. Churches have been ransacked, as they were during last year's legislative elections. Most of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia are Christians while 90 percent of the nation's 200 million people are Muslim. Some of those hardest hit by the economic crisis are among the country's most conservative followers of Islam.

Tension is expected to rise leading up to the presidential election next month when Suharto will stand for a seventh five-year term. He is almost certain to win because the ballots will be cast by an assembly mainly appointed by him. There have been increasing calls for him to step down.

April is expected to be a key month in determining how much Indonesians are willing to endure as their economy founders. The government is to lift subsidies on fuel as part of the IMF reform package. Mere rumors of fuel price increases have already sparked rioting.