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.