When Suharto entered his seventh term as president, following an uncontested election on 10 March 1998, Indonesian students began a series of major demonstrations in protest of the New Order regime which continued for weeks and culminated in the shootings of four students by security forces at Trisakti University in May. The incident sparked major violence in several cities during 12–15 May. Property and businesses owned by Chinese Indonesians were targeted by mobs, and over 100 women were sexually assaulted; this aspect of the riots, though generally accepted as true, has been denied by several Indonesian groups. In the absence of security forces, large groups of men, women, and children looted and burned the numerous shopping malls in major cities. In Jakarta and Surakarta over 1,000 people—both Chinese and non-Chinese—died inside shopping malls. Tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese fled the country following these events, and bankers estimated that US$20 billion of capital had left the country in 1997–1999 to overseas destinations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, and the United States.