Aliang has been staring blankly for days. He is now safe in a Buddhist temple in Batam, and managed to save wife and children. But no one can persuade him to speak. His life is in tatters, his house and shop destroyed in riots that last week swept Selatpanjang, on nearby Bengkalis island. It forced him and most of the city’s other ethnic Chinese to flee for their lives.

"Nobody has been able to make him talk," said Harry Tangkil