Conflict in diversity

Conflict in diversity

The government of President Abdurrahman Wahid faces an acute
dilemma in dealing with the aftermath of violence in Sampit and
other Central Kalimantan towns in the vicinity. More than 50,000
settlers from Madura have been forced to flee the area in the
wake of ethnic cleansing by the local Dayak people.

The government now has to decide whether to send the Madurese
back to Central Kalimantan, or to resettle them, either in their
original home villages on Madura island or elsewhere in the
archipelago. Either option has risks, not only for the refugees
themselves, but more importantly, for the future of this nation.

Sending the refugees back to Central Kalimantan would almost
guarantee genocide of horrific proportions. That was also the
reason why they were evacuated by Navy ships in the first place.
The Dayak people, having carried out an effective campaign to
drive the Madurese settlers out, have vowed never to accept them
on their land again. The Dayaks made clear their contempt for the
Madurese during their campaign -- beheading Madurese and parading
their heads in the streets before the hordes of Indonesian and
foreign journalists. No guarantee from the military or police
would be sufficient to ensure that the Madurese would be
completely protected if they ever returned to Sampit.

But not sending the Madurese back would not only be
logistically challenging, it would also send the wrong signal to
the hundreds of ethnic groups across the archipelago.

Logistically, the government will have difficulty in quickly
finding new homes for these refugees. They join hundreds of
thousands of other people who have been displaced by violent
conflicts which erupted in various provinces over the last three
years, including East Timor (now an independent state), Maluku
and North Maluku, Aceh, Central Sulawesi and West Kalimantan. If
anyone should be resettled, these longtime refugees should have
first claim before the fresh batch of Madurese from Central
Kalimantan.

A far more serious problem to this option of resettling the
Madurese rather than sending them back is that it is making a
complete mockery of the concept of Indonesia as a nation state,
and particularly of the state logo Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in
Diversity). In fact, this option, if carried out, would only
encourage other ethnic groups who, like the Dayaks, may have an
axe to grind, to launch their own ethnic cleansing campaign.

We have already seen various ethnic groups, who like the
Dayaks feel they have been marginalized by the economic progress
of the past 50 years or so, asserting themselves politically.

Areas that have been the target of the past transmigration
(resettlement) policy are particularly prone to ethnic conflict.
Like the Madurese in Central Kalimantan, transmigrants were given
land and generous government funding to start a new life in the
settlements. Many eventually succeeded in business and in jobs to
the point of edging out the local people. These settlers also
occupy land which many local people still claim as theirs. This
condition does not bode well for cultural and ethnical harmony.

One columnist in this paper aptly describes transmigration as
internal colonization with all the potential for conflicts
between settlers and the original inhabitants. That makes
virtually all provinces outside Java vulnerable to the kind of
conflicts we have just witnessed in Sampit.

But even in Java there are ethnic groups who feel they too
have been left out of the country's economic progress, like the
Banten people, who have now won their own province separate from
West Java. Here in Jakarta, the Betawi have been pushed further
and further out of the ever-booming capital city.

What we see in Sampit is only one of many illustrations of
what 50 years of misrule can do to a nation. While politicians
and experts seem to have an explanation about why the violence
erupted, no one has any real practical solution. There is no fast
and easy answer to the problem. We cannot undo 50 years of
mismanagement, or of our failure in nation building, in one day.

Yet, the future of the concept of Indonesia as a state hinges
on how the government resolves the aftermath of the Sampit
violence. A single wrong move from the government could turn the
state motto from "unity in diversity" into "conflict in
diversity". If that happens, Indonesia's days are numbered.