Ethnic conflict in Central Kalimantan: The aftermath
Ethnic conflict in Central Kalimantan: The aftermath
By Peter Kerr
SAMPIT, Central Kalimantan (JP): A middle-aged Dayak woman
stands outside her home on Jl. Jenderal S. Parman, one of the
wide streets that lead away from the riverside port and market
here.
On each side of her property are the charred remains of homes
that belonged to her Madurese neighbors, who are now either dead
or have escaped to East Java, she is not sure.
The woman refuses to give her name. Like many in Sampit she is
afraid the Madurese may return to take revenge for the Dayak
rampage in February which killed about 500 Madurese, and perhaps
more than 1,000.
Across the road, the home of a Dayak man who works in the
local tax office also stands untouched between the ruins of
Madurese houses.
"I saw the fighting but I didn't want to see the outcome,"
Piter Man says of Feb. 20 and 21 when hundreds of forest Dayaks
"liberated" Sampit from the Madurese, who days earlier had
claimed the town as their own.
"They (the Dayaks from forests around Sampit) came here by
truck and on foot many times over those days," he says.
"Some were in traditional dress, some in ordinary clothes with
a red headband. They carried mandau (a machete-like sword) and
spears."
Piter feels sorry for the good Madurese who died or were
evacuated, but says others were thieves, or they used violence to
solve petty disputes.
"I feel safer now there are no Madurese in Sampit, but I'm
afraid they will come back for revenge."
More than 100,000 Madurese fled Central Kalimantan province
between February and April this year after the massacre in Sampit
and neighboring towns.
About 70,000 fled Sampit, the center of Central Kalimantan's
timber trade where they had comprised more than 60 percent of the
population.
The ethnic cleansing of Central Kalimantan is all but
complete. About 20 women in mixed marriages stay out of sight in
Sampit, while a Madurese community of about 20,000 remains in the
adjacent district of Pangkalanbun, protected by a friendly
district chief.
Most escaped to Madura island off Java, where aid groups are
helping local communities cope with the huge influx of displaced
people into areas that often lack sewerage and drinking water.
Despite the brutality in Sampit, where hundreds were beheaded
according to Dayak fighting custom and more than 1,000 houses
razed, most Madurese want to return to rebuild their homes and
businesses, in many cases established over two, three or four
generations.
In Sampit that seems impossible to imagine, at least for some
years.
About a kilometer from Piter's house, a Batak man (from North
Sumatra) rummages around in a drawer and brings out a small
photograph album.
It contains about 30 photos he took secretly in the days after
the fighting, mostly of dead Madurese. One shows about 10 bodies,
almost all headless, heaped in a side road.
Others are close-ups: The bloated yellow body of a man
floating in the river, his mustachioed face inflated cartoon-
like. A torso in jeans and striped shirt, with a smear of red
where the head was sliced off. An out-of-focus head dumped white
and bald on the ground.
Some photos are of Dayaks: A man in the morgue with his neck
partly severed and entrails spilling from his side. Another cut
down on the footpath, his plastic basket of vegetables and eggs
scattered among the feet of onlookers.
The explosion of violence in February took most outsiders by
surprise, but Dayaks say it had been building for years, even
generations.
At its core, they say, is the steady erosion of Dayak control
over their land and culture, the result of foreign companies
exploiting Kalimantan's forest and mineral wealth, and the
arrival of immigrants from other parts of Indonesia.
But in Sampit there also was simmering resentment against a
Madurese criminal element that established itself around the port
and market. This fueled the reputation that Madurese have among
other Indonesians of being forthright to the point of rudeness.
Dayaks, immigrant Banjarese (from South Kalimantan) and others
from Java all blame Madurese for thievery and violence, saying
they were quick to use their traditional curved clurit knives in
disputes.
A Javanese doctor in the local hospital agrees that, apart
from traffic accidents, most trauma injuries before the Madurese
left were caused by clurit -- although he says most victims were
themselves Madurese.
What sparked the Sampit slaughter is unclear.
Anger lingered over the police's failure to arrest three
Madurese for murdering a Dayak in nearby Kereng Pangi two months
earlier.
The respected Brussels-based International Crisis Group, in a
report two weeks ago, notes that Madurese in Sampit feared
revenge attacks, and that Dayaks believed they were stockpiling
homemade bombs.
Shortly after midnight on Feb. 18 a group of Dayaks killed
five Madurese in a Sampit house, and Madurese retaliated by
burning down a house containing a Dayak family.
The majority Madurese then "took control" of Sampit, killing
up to 24 Dayaks and, according to Dayaks, patrolling the streets
with banners such as "Sampit is a Madurese town" and "Sampit is
the second Sampang" (a major town in Madura).
Thousands of Dayaks and other non-Madurese fled Sampit,
spreading the news and setting the fuse for the bloody revenge to
follow.
The Dayak "liberators" are hailed as heroes in Sampit and the
Central Kalimantan capital of Palangkaraya, where this month the
provincial government will consider a permit system to regulate
who can enter the province, basically aimed at keeping out
Madurese "undesirables".
Dayaks also intend building a memorial near Sampit. Some say
this will be a monument to peace; others want it to honor the
Dayak "victory".
"There was no choice for them, they had to retaliate for their
dignity and integrity," says a senior member of the Council for
the Liberation of Dayak Society and Provincial Community, set up
in 1994.
He asks to remain anonymous, as council members have been
accused of inciting the violence and a number remain under city
arrest in Sampit and Palangkaraya.
"This (conflict) was a result of the marginalization of the
Dayak people -- political, economic and social -- during the New
Order.
"Our Dayak lobby has been no good in Jakarta, but through this
conflict we are starting to get a voice there.
"This has been good (for Dayak culture). It has many
blessings, and we have to use it and move forward."
He says regulations are needed to guarantee Madurese criminals
do not return. In the longer term, Dayaks must be guaranteed a
fair share of Central Kalimantan's resources.
This hardline stand was evident at a Kalimantan People's
Congress held last month, which accused the Madurese of starting
the Sampit violence and demanded they apologize.
The chairman of the provincial council, Fawzy Zain Bachsin,
says priority will be given this month to regulating entry to the
province, but other changes will take much longer.
A Dayak sociologist at Palangkaraya University, Arnusianto,
says attempts to legislate for economic equality, while worthy,
will have to deal with the reluctance of traditional Dayaks to
participate in the formal economy.
"They don't like to work like that ... they also don't work as
employees, they are very independent," he says. "They like to go
to the forest and live on their own.
"You can see there have been so many big companies -- timber
or palm oil plantations, big companies -- and the Dayaks still
live in the forest around there.
"They're not really interested in working in the formal sector
like that."
He says as well that many Dayaks, not just those living a
traditional lifestyle, do not appreciate the value of education.
But one of those accused of inciting the violence against
Madurese, Pedlik Asser, puts this down to an historic denial of
Dayak access to the benefits of their land's resources.
"They have not had the chance at education," says Pedlik, who
denies claims that he paid forest Dayaks to start the Sampit
killings.
"If the Dayak people are given the proper resources, maybe
they can learn about the benefits of education.
"Firstly, you must know that the people want peace. Secondly,
they want the legal right to manage their own natural resources.
"The Dayaks want to live together with the other people, but
with conditions that ensure that they respect each other."
The writer is deputy foreign editor at The Sydney Morning
Herald newspaper. He recently spent four months at The Jakarta
Post under a Medialink fellowship, funded by the Australia-
Indonesia Institute.