Galang Island's poignant past open to visitors

Galang Island's poignant past open to visitors

Text and photos by A. Junaidi

GALANG ISLAND, Riau (JP): Sadness, emptiness and horror are
among the impressions of visitors to this island, where hundreds
of thousands of Vietnamese boat people lived in a refugee camp in
the 1970s.

Today, it is being styled as a tourist attraction, with new,
smooth roads on its 8,000 hectares situated south of Batam
industrial island. But its haunting past still comes through.

Its selling points are the deserted dormitories, former
hospital, schools, church, jail, dormitory for security officers
-- all made from wood -- and hundreds of graves of Vietnamese and
several Cambodians.

Marsudi, an employee of the Batam Industrial Development
Authority, the agency which supervises Galang, said about 520
Vietnamese and Cambodians were buried at the site after it was
designated a refugee camp in 1976.

Tombstones with Christian and Buddhist symbols dot a cemetery
on a small hill.

It is rumored that several Vietnamese committed suicide when
they were given the ultimatum of returning to Vietnam or to a
third country in 1996. The spirits are said to still roam the
area.

A park in front of the cemetery -- home to two stone statues
of female figures -- was reportedly the site where a girl was
gang-raped and killed. Both the victim and the rapists were
Vietnamese.

About 200 meters from the cemetery, there are empty wooden
dormitories, each containing small rooms. Some are falling apart
from neglect. Grass grows tall around the building.

An empty wooden church is located in the middle of the
dormitory complex, a statue of the Virgin Mary standing out
front.

The doors of the dormitories and the church are open, but the
interiors are dark and foreboding.

Also dilapidated is a small hospital for refugees formerly
operated by the International Red Cross. Paint on the walls is
pale and peeling.

One of the few buildings which is still well-maintained is the
two-story police dormitory. The first floor was used for
detention cells and the second was a dormitory.

A company of Police Mobile Brigade officers was formerly
deployed at the site.

Some tourists prefer to stay in their vehicles as they visit
the different sites.

But they usually drop in at the Buddhist temple, not far from
the cemetery, which was built by the Vietnamese 20 years ago. A
stone statue of a goddess and a dragon stands in front of the
Quan Am Tu temple.

The temple is now led by Se Ta Ceh, an Chinese-Indonesian monk
who took over the job from a Vietnamese monk three years ago.

Se said the old wooden temple was no longer used for prayer,
replaced by an adjacent one.

"Many businesspeople from Singapore helped in the construction
of the new temple. They donated cement and other materials," he
said.

The monk, in his 60s, said Buddhist followers flocked from
Batam and Singapore on Saturday and Sunday.

The Batam Industrial Development Authority's chairman, Ismeth
Abdullah, said Galang was designated for nature and cultural
tourism in Barelang, the acronym for the islands of Batam,
Rempang and Galang, which are under the agency's authority.

He said many former Vietnamese refugees now living in other
countries, such as Australia and United States, visited Galang to
remember their past.

"Some of the refugees have now become affluent in their new
countries. They come here to see their relatives' graves, taking
soil of the graves," Ismeth told The Jakarta Post.

He said BIDA was repairing roads into the interior of the
island and building other public facilities, including motels and
home stays.

He hoped the opening of the island as a tourist destination
would increase the number of foreign tourists in Barelang, which
last year reached more than 1.2 million people -- the second
largest number in the country after Bali. At least 70 percent of
the visitors are from Singapore.

He also hoped the tourists would spend more than the current
average of 2.2 days.

On Sept. 8, 1996 the camp was symbolically shut down in a
ceremony attended by the Asia and Oceania bureau director of the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Francois
Fouinat, and the head of Indonesia's Galang '96 humanitarian task
force, Maj. Gen. Arie Kumaat.

Today it is home to 60 families, from various places in the
country such as North Sumatra, Java and East Nusa Tenggara.

Marsudi, in his 50s, arrived on the island from Wonogiri in
Central Java in 1960s. The father of three worked at a plantation
on the island before becoming BIDA's employee overseeing the
former camp.

"Tourists have yet to be required to pay fees if they come
here," he said.

Away from the haunting refugee camp, Galang's beaches are
beautiful and clean. The beach is a relief after the harrowing
sights of the camp.