'Death better than living as a refugee'

Yogita Tahilramani and Edith Hartanto, The Jakarta Post, Sampang, Madura

Time comes to a stop in Sampang. As the sun scorches the roads, time still refuses to move for some 3,000 refugees living in a transit center in the Ketapang district of Sampang regency.

"We want to die. The local administration should round us up and kill us all. It's better than living in this hell," a 26-year-old refugee from Sampit told The Jakarta Post last Thursday.

Unemployment has left the refugees to their own fates in the vast transit center.

"Had we known that our lives in Sampang would be worse than death, we would have rather been killed by the Dayaks in Sampit (Central Kalimantan)," said the grimy but sharp-eyed refugee.

Sudarno comes from a family of five, including his ancient- looking grandmother Sa'anah who cannot remember her age, all of whom live in extreme poverty. Like most of the refugees in the center, they are unemployed.

The refugees include not only the elderly, but widows whose husbands were among the thousands killed two years ago in clashes with Dayaks in Central Kalimantan.

They are part of a total 88,500 refugees in Sampang alone. East Java, however, is currently home to 181,575 refugees, or a total of 44,802 families.

Naked, scrawny children with blotched skin around their legs, backs and faces run around the center, while others nibble on tiny fish bones or cut up tiny pieces of the fish their fathers caught earlier in the day.

With unemployment ravaging Sampang, the only daily work available to the refugees is as fishermen. By working from 4 a.m. until late in the evening, fishermen are paid between Rp 1,000 and Rp 2,000.

The refugees live in abhorrent conditions, with often up to three families occupying a single three-by-2.5 meter unit or room. The heat is unbearable and the air is thick with pollution and sand blown from the nearby beach. Garbage is everywhere, as is human feces.

The only thing that occupies the days for these refugees is sleeping outside in the sun. Men sleep under the shade of trees in their sarongs, while the women, with skin blackened by the sun, sleep outside their rooms in sarongs and brassieres.

"It is not that we want to die. We are working people," Sudarno's young brother, Suryono, said.

"We do not want to beg on the streets; we'd rather die. We want to work, but there is none. We want to go home because all our land is in Central Kalimantan, but the local administration continues to refuse to send us home.

"The administration says that the situation in Sampit is not yet safe, but we have repeatedly told them to leave our lives to us, because we'd all really rather die," he said.

Each person in the center receives a bit over 10 kilograms of rice each month from the World Food Program.

For vegetables or any kind of meat, the majority of those in the center depend on the few rare refugees who have managed to set up food stalls.

Refugees and locals living in neighboring villages come to these food stall to buy snacks or powdered drinks.

Ditjah, a 40-year-old unemployed mother of six, whose husband is currently suffering from a high fever, said most of the refugees had families in Madura, but did not want to burden them by staying in their homes for too long.

"We stayed with our relatives in Bangkalan and Sampang for a week or so. But after a few days, we felt awkward. Our relatives hardly have jobs to hold onto, and then we show up with our problems," Ditjah said, while trying to calm her crying 18-month- old baby.

"What can we do on Rp 2,000 (25 US cents) a day? And now my husband is sick."

Sedoni, a 50-year-old man, said there were no medical facilities in the refugee center.

Lifting up his shirt, Sedoni showed the red bumps on his chest and stomach, which he said came from the bad water in the wells.

"We get diarrhea from drinking that water and there are no medical facilities here. We heal naturally, many days later," Sedoni said.

"We once tried bathing with water from the wells in the nearby neighborhood units. The locals kicked us out, saying that we were refugees and should bathe in our own camps."

The refugees are sometimes forced to bathe together, men and women, due to the extreme shortage of water.

"The water comes on at about 11:30 a.m. and then there is no water until about 5 p.m. or 6 p.m., till the next day," Musliaah, who like her mother and grandmother in the transit center, is a widow.