ON two days this week, ordinary Chinese delivered petitions to the Indonesian Embassy in Beijing to express their anger at the killing and rape of ethnic Chinese and demand those involved be punished.
Students from Beijing University, who have put up posters criticising their Government for not doing enough to help the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia during the May riots, plan to stage a protest at the embassy tomorrow, Indonesia's Independence Day.
In other countries, such protests would not be news. But they are in China, which bans demonstrations against foreign governments because of its public policy of non-interference in the affairs of other countries, and its nervousness that public protest might turn against the Government.
So why is Beijing allowing the protests this time? Public indignation on the issue has become too intense to ignore, especially after revelations that 150 women, mostly ethnic Chinese, were raped in what appeared to be an organised operation.
This news was posted on the Internet and given wide coverage by the Beijing Youth Daily, one of the capital's most popular newspapers.
The petition delivered on Monday, signed by 232 Chinese, compared the treatment of the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
It was this anger that forced Beijing to abandon its usual politeness towards Jakarta.