The violence was directed at destroying property owned by Chinese Indonesians and Chinese temples.

 

The majority of anti-Chinese violence in previous riots also involved only by looting Chinese shops and property without killing the owners themselves. Anti-Chinese riots took the form of looting goods, burning nouses, and killing on the spot those identified as Chinese. Most Indonesians believed that the Chinese have an infinite supply of products and thought that the shops would open again in the future despite the looting.

 

Indonesian Muslims who physically looked Chinese were attacked by rioters, despite not identifying as Chinese at all and only having one distant Chinese great grandfather. An Indonesian Muslim woman who had 5 sons, Ruminah, mentioned she had just one Chinese grandfather who married a local Muslim woman and she did not identify as Chinese at all or speak Chinese but she and her family were constantly harassed and hated by their neighbours just for their Chinese physical looks and her hair salon was ransacked and one of her sons died in a fire at the mall during the riots.