Peace elusive as ever in Kalimantan<\/p>\n
Kanis Dursin
\nThe Jakarta Post
\nJakarta<\/p>\n
Peace remained elusive as ever in the land of headhunters in
\n2001 as a fresh bout of ethnic violence pitting native Dayaks
\nagainst migrant Madurese broke out in Central Kalimantan last
\nFebruary, wearing down a fragile \"truce\" between the two hostile
\ncommunities.<\/p>\n
The clashes between Dayaks and Madurese shocked the world and
\nwere further exacerbated by the fact that the government was
\nincredibly slow in responding, highlighting its insensitivity to
\nthe images of bodies with heads severed and others with entrails
\nspilling out.<\/p>\n
Police and military personnel stationed in Kalimantan
\nprovinces were obviously not only outnumbered by members of
\nwarring parties, but were also unprepared to handle mass conflict
\nof such a large scale. And police and military personnel sent
\nfrom Jakarta as reinforcement proved to be either powerless or
\ntoo late to contain the savagery. Worse still, police and
\nmilitary personnel differed on how to handle the violence and
\nfleeing refugees, which resulted in a shootout that killed one
\nsoldier and wounded a number of policemen.<\/p>\n
Other than a long history of hostility and deep-seated hatred,
\nnobody knows exactly what triggered the carnage, which began when
\na group of armed Dayaks suddenly attacked Madurese migrants in
\nthe Pelalang resettlement area in Sampit in the wee hours of Feb.
\n18, 2001, killing at least five Madurese.<\/p>\n
The attack unnerved Madurese, who are well known for their
\ntoughness and solidarity with fellow Madurese, to launch large-
\nscale retaliation operations against native Dayaks.<\/p>\n
Being the majority in Sampit, the Madurese, who are also
\nassociated with clurit (a traditional sharp weapon), the karapan
\nsapi (traditional cow racing) and violence, easily took control
\nof Sampit, a bustling town located 214 kilometers northwest of
\nprovincial capital Palangkaraya, killing at least 24 Dayaks in
\nthe process. The Madurese marched down the town's streets, flying
\nbanners with \"Sampit is a Madurese town\" and \"Sampit is the
\nsecond Sampang\" (a major town in Madura).<\/p>\n
The \"fall\" of Sampit into Madurese control forced residents of
\nother ethnic groups, including Malays and Bugis, to flee Sampit
\nand the Dayaks to evacuate, spreading the news to other parts of
\nCentral Kalimantan. Soon, the violence spread to other villages,
\nsubdistricts and districts in Central Kalimantan, eventually
\nreaching the provincial capital of Palangkaraya.<\/p>\n
But the Dayaks, who had a well-preserved reputation as head-
\nhunters until Dutch colonialists outlawed the practice in the
\nlate 19th century, were far from defeated. According to the head
\nof the Association of East Kalimantan Dayaks, Julianus Sulaiman,
\nthe word \"Dayak\" comes from the Dutch word dayaker, meaning a
\nwild community.<\/p>\n
What happened next was a full-blown, unbridled ethnic war,
\nwith each warring party on the offensive and defensive
\nalternately.<\/p>\n
In early March, the Dayaks, firmly believing that all of
\nKalimantan rightfully belonged to them because it was their
\nancestral land, launched a bloody revenge against the Madurese
\nthat culminated in the Dayaks taking over Sampit, killing
\nthousands of innocent people. In some cases, the victims' bodies
\nwere mutilated beyond recognition.<\/p>\n
Dayak mobs hunted down and killed Madurese, including women,
\nchildren and the elderly. They also attacked and burned houses
\nand businesses belonging to Madurese.<\/p>\n
With the Dayaks taking control of Sampit, tens of thousands of
\nMadurese migrants fled their houses and left their belongings in
\nSampit and returned to the land of their ancestors, Madura, a
\nsmall barren island off Surabaya, the capital of East Java
\nprovince. The Sampit refugees, as the Madurese returnees are
\ncalled, are now housed in squalid refugee camps on Madura.
\nGovernment officials have repeatedly promised to send back the
\nrefugees to Central Kalimantan, but have given no date for their
\nrepatriation.<\/p>\n
The February-April ethnic conflict was not the first between
\nthe Dayaks and Madurese. In 1999, the Madurese clashed with the
\nDayaks and other ethnic groups in Sambas and Singkawang in West
\nKalimantan, killing thousands of people from both sides. It also
\nforced tens of thousands Madurese to flee to provincial capital
\nPontianak and some return to Madura. In 1997, ethnic conflict
\nbetween the Dayaks and Madurese also broke out in Sanggau Ledo,
\nWest Kalimantan, killing hundreds of innocent people, including
\nchildren.<\/p>\n
One intriguing question that perhaps only the Dayaks, the
\nmajority of whom are Christian, and Madurese, generally Muslim,
\ncan answer is why the two communities harbor such a deep-seated
\nhatred against the other that full-blown ethnic conflicts can
\nerupt at any time, with any insignificant occurrence as the
\ntrigger?<\/p>\n
The hatred is so intense that it appears to even conquer the
\nholy bond of religion. In 2001, for example, angry Madurese
\nmercilessly beat to death a Dayak Muslim man who had accompanied
\nhis Madurese wife to Madura after the ethnic conflict in Sampit.
\nIn 1999, some Madurese men, who had converted to Christianity and
\nhad Christian wives, had to take sanctuary in churches in
\nPontianak to avoid angry Dayak Christians.<\/p>\n
The usual explanation offered by experts and government
\nofficials has been economic jealousy. Madurese, who first set
\nfoot on the country's biggest territory in the 1960s through
\ngovernment-sponsored transmigration programs, are said to control
\neconomic life in Kalimantan, while their Dayak counterparts are
\npoor and largely marginalized.<\/p>\n
Such an explanation, however, contradicts reality in the
\nfield. Just as on the national level, Chinese-Indonesians and, to
\na certain extent, traders from Sumatra who are locally referred
\nto as Malays, control the economy in Kalimantan. So, if the
\ntrigger was economic jealousy, the ethnic Chinese and Malay
\ntraders should have been the main targets of the Dayak people's
\nwrath.<\/p>\n
But so far, there have been no reports of conflicts between
\nDayaks and Malay traders or Chinese-Indonesians in Kalimantan. In
\nfact, in the 1999 ethnic conflict in Singkawang and Sambas,
\nethnic groups like the Malays, Bugis and Chinese as well as
\nJavanese migrants sided with the Dayaks in driving Madurese out
\nof the two towns. These ethnic groups have also been unanimous in
\ntheir rejection of the return of Madurese who are now living in a
\nnumber of temporary resettlements in and around Pontianak. Their
\nfuture remains uncertain, as local authorities appear reluctant
\nto relocate them to other parts of West Kalimantan province.<\/p>\n
The Dayaks, Malays, Javanese and ethnic Chinese as well Bugis
\nin West Kalimantan are particularly affronted by the perceived
\narrogance of the Madurese, who, in the words of the other ethnic
\ngroups \"were not planting but were harvesting, were not raising
\ncows but were selling them\". Some Madurese leaders in Pontianak
\nacknowledge the wayward attitudes of some Madurese migrants in
\nWest Kalimantan, but assert that there are more good Madurese
\nthan there are bad Madurese. Other ethnic groups agree with the
\nassessment, but became irritated that Madurese elders did nothing
\nto punish the wayward Madurese.<\/p>\n
The conflict revealed that after more than 50 years of
\nindependence, Indonesia is still very much compartmentalized by
\nreligion or ethnicity or both. Under such a condition, the
\ncountry remains prone to disintegration. And the fear becomes
\nreal if one looks at the country's police and military, which
\nhave proven to be ill-equipped to deal with full-scale social
\nconflict.<\/p>\n
Needless to say the continued, earth-shaking Dayak-Madurese
\nconflict has raised concerns over the future of Indonesia, which
\nhas been plagued by social unrest triggered by the prolonged
\neconomic crisis beleaguering the country since 1997. With the
\nspecter of ethnic and religious conflicts, plus \"rebellions\" in
\ntwo provinces, there is indeed a clear reason to worry about the
\nvery existence of this country.<\/p>",
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