Kalimantan rejects Madurese migrants: Officials

Kalimantan rejects Madurese migrants: Officials

Yuliansyah
The Jakarta Post
Banjarmasin, South Kalimantan

Traumatized by past ethnic killings, indigenous Dayak residents
in Kalimantan provinces have rejected the resettlement of
Madurese people in Kalimantan under the government's
transmigration program this year, officials have said.

The Dayak people, particularly those living in Central
Kalimantan, have agreed to accept migrants from all ethnic groups
in the country except people from East Java's Madura island.

Head of the South Kalimantan manpower and transmigration
office H.A. Munasib confirmed on Wednesday that people in his
province, in particular residents in areas that border Central
Kalimantan, wanted to exclude Madurese migrants from the
resettlement program.

"Those who have set conditions for the government not to
accept a certain ethnic (Madura) group are the people from
Belawang subdistrict in the regency of Barito Kuala and
surrounding (border) areas, where new migrants will be sent this
year," he told The Jakarta Post.

Munasib revealed that the rejection was due to the Dayak'
trauma over the 1999 deadly battles between them and the Madurese
in the towns of Sambas and Sampit in Central Kalimantan.

Hundreds of people, mostly Madurese were killed and thousands
of others fled to Java when the Dayak people took revenge on the
minority migrant group in March 1999.

Similar riots broke out earlier in 1996 in West and Central
Kalimantan between the Dayak community and the Madurese, leaving
hundreds of people dead and thousands of others homeless after
they were expelled from the provinces.

Thousands of Madurese refugees, who fled the ethnic unrest in
1999, are still languishing in camps in East Java. Many of them
have said they want to return home to Kalimantan to start a new
life with their brothers there.

Munasib said Kotabaru Regent Sjachrani Mataja had submitted a
request to the South Kalimantan governor not to include Madurese
people in the migrants due for resettlement in his district.

In his letter, Sjachrani requested that West Java migrants be
sent to the Kotabaru town of Hampang for resettlement.

"I don't know what has prompted the regent to make such a
proposal," Munasib said.

He said the provincial administration would gather inputs from
the common people to determine their response to this year's
transmigration program in South Kalimantan, especially concerning
their readiness to accept participants from Java.

"We will later deliver this information to the central
government for discussion," he added.

Munasib said that if the government was not able to avoid
excluding Madurese among this year's migrants to Kalimantan
provinces, it should at least reduce their number so as to
respect the Dayak people's wishes.

He said around 400 families, half of them from Java, would be
resettled in Hampang in South Kalimantan and the adjacent area of
Barito Kuala in Central Kalimantan in 2003.

The remaining 50 percent of the settlers would be local poor
indigenous people, he added.

It is hoped that local people joining the migration program
would be able to better their life as they would receive houses
and one year life insurance.

Last year, South and Central Kalimantan received around 800
families who migrated from Java and other provinces, Munasib
said, adding there were no Dayak among them.

He said the central government has allocated around Rp 20
billion from the state budget to finance this year's
transmigration program. The money is the same amount as the funds
used to support the 2002 program.

Most of the funds would be used to finance the development of
facilities in the resettlement areas, he argued.

"We don't want this program to fail. Therefore, the government
will pay serious attention to the welfare of the migrants
including improving facilities in their resettlement areas,"
Munasib said.