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.