Avoiding the mistakes of Ambon

Avoiding the mistakes of Ambon

By George J. Aditjondro

NEWCASTLE, Australia (JP): Indonesia has again been plunged
into a new spate of ethnic violence. Since the first Dayak attack
on Madurese settlers in the town of Sampit, Central Kalimantan,
on Feb. 18, at least 400 people have been killed -- mostly
Madurese.

Jakarta's response has, however, been deplorable. After first
allowing the police and military to be passive onlookers, with
only the Navy helping tens of thousands of Madurese migrants flee
to East Java, Vice President Megawati Soekarnoputri has deployed
1,200 officers and soldiers from the 650 Battalion of the
Strategic Reserve Command (KOSTRAD) to the troubled province.

Heavily outnumbered, they have not been able to stop the
carnage, while Dayak vigilantes have occupied the province's
capital, Palangkaraya, in their campaign to cleanse the province
of all Madurese migrants.

Jakarta's uneasiness in dealing with this recent ethnic
uprising indicates several points.

First, it shows how unprepared the National Police is in
taking over the role of maintaining civilian peace and order from
the military, after 30 years of living in its shadow.

Apart from Jakarta, where the Police's Special Brigade
(Brimob) has enough water cannons and tear gas to deal with a
massive uprising, in the outer islands -- especially in Aceh and
West Papua -- Brimob troops have responded with the same brutal
tactics as their military counterparts: shoot all troublemakers
on sight.

That is, if they are not outnumbered by the troublemakers.

Second, the military commanders in Jakarta have not learned
the bitter lessons from Ambon in Maluku.

Sending in Kostrad troops did not help to extinguish the
ethnic flames in Maluku, but had instead fanned the flames, due
to the military doctrine of treating all social unrest as treason
and all troublemakers as enemies of the state -- to be
exterminated.

Kostrad troops from Makassar, South Sulawesi, had proven to be
not impartial in the interethnic and interreligious riots in
Ambon, and openly sided with the Muslim locals and migrants.

Third, the central government has not realized the extent of
bitterness which the Dayak people, the indigenous people of
Kalimantan, feel toward those successive governments in
marginalizing them on all fronts.

Certainly, the massive opening up of Kalimantan to foreign and
national mining, forestry and plantation companies, as well as to
planned and spontaneous migrants from Java and other islands, the
poor, traders and laborers, have not benefited the indigenous
people, who have been systematically evicted and alienated from
their customary lands.

Then, all existing political parties have not seriously
addressed Dayak concerns or included Dayak intellectuals in their
national boards.

In fact, the political party law that determines that all
political parties have to have branches in 13 provinces closes
the door for the emergence of a Kalimantan-wide party, since
there are only four provinces in this Indonesian part of the
island of Kalimantan, or Borneo.

This is especially ironic, considering the fact that the
Central Kalimantan province was created by the late president
Sukarno in 1957 in response to aspirations expressed by the Pro
Panca Sila Cutlass and Shield Movement (Gerakan Mandau Talawang
Pro Panca Sila [GMTPS]).

This Ngaju-Dayak insurrection demanded a separate province for
the Ngaju-Dayak people, separate from the existing province of
South Kalimantan.

It broke out on Nov. 10, 1956, with an attack on the police
station in Pahandut, the village that later became Palangkaraya,
Central Kalimantan's newly created capital.

This movement was partly triggered in reaction to the rising
movement to create an Islamic state, Darul Islam, which was
widely supported by Ibnu Hajar in South Kalimantan.

Apart from upholding the state philosophy of Panca Sila, GMTPS
also supported a federative structure for Indonesia, rather than
the unitarian structure that has been upheld with the military's
iron fist for nearly five decades.

So, if Jakarta wants to find a fundamental solution to the
Dayak rebellion in Central Kalimantan, and prevent it from
spreading to the other Kalimantan provinces, and turn it into an
island-wide movement for Dayak self-determination, Megawati and
her military supporters had better fly over and start talking to
the Dayak leaders, rather than simply using the Wild West style
of "sending in the cavalry".

Dr. George J. Aditjondro teaches at the Department of
Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Newcastle,
Australia.