Group’S Trip Canceled By Indonesian Riots Three-Week Tour By Nic Faculty, Community Members Was To Begin Today

North Idaho College instructor Judith Sylte and 28 other faculty and community members were supposed to board a plane to Indonesia today.

But the group, which planned on spending 3-1/2 weeks studying the country’s history and culture, has called off the trip because of massive riots there that have left more than 500 people dead.

“It’s really very, very bad right now,” Sylte said. “We’re really disappointed.”

Americans and others are fleeing the country after widespread violence broke out in recent weeks as protesters urge longtime President Suharto to step down. The U.S. State Department has issued a warning against travel there.

Sylte said she has spent the past several days sending faxes and e-mail to Indonesia, trying to assess the situation.

She talked with a man in Australia who works for an airline that serves Indonesia.

“He said it was like the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War,” she said. “Mobs of people crowded around the ticket desk waving fistfuls of American dollars to get out.”

Sylte and her husband, Jim, who visited the island nation last year, have spent several months teaching a weekly course on Indonesia for the others in the study group.

George Ives, who teaches English and humanities at NIC, did a report for the class about a bloody revolution in Indonesia in 1965.

“You can see all that handwriting on the wall developing again over the last three or four months,” Ives said.

The cancellation was a disappointment to 18-year-old Holly Klinger, but she said there is a bright side.

“I feel lucky that it happened when it did instead of another week when I would have been there,” Klinger said.

The group also can consider itself lucky for taking out trip insurance. Each of the travelers is expected to be reimbursed the approximately $3,000 paid for the trip.

Transportation and communication in major cities are in a state of anarchy, Sylte said.

She said she worries about the friends they met in Indonesia last summer, especially a young rickshaw driver with a wife and son who was making $1.25 per day before the economic crisis hit.

“There’s no way to contact someone like that,” she said.

Despite the turmoil, Sylte said she hopes to bring a tour group to Indonesia next year.

“There is no classroom like travel,” she said.