Marginalization in Maluku

I read the opinion article by Angelique L. Pauline van Engelen and Harley Saimima on the cause of the conflict now flaring in Maluku, which The Jakarta Post published on page 5 under the title The seeds of discontent in the beautiful Maluku islands in its July 20, issue, and have been prompted to comment on it.

The two writers have blamed the resettlement project as the root cause of the Maluku conflict. They point to the fact that thousands of newcomers have been resettled separately from the local people, many of whom have had their plots of land forcefully seized for these resettled people. The presence of these newcomers and the election of the heads of new villages opened up for them have been seen as an attempt to Javanize the area.

While this opinion may be correct in some respects, the statistical data available tell a different story. For about 30 years -- six 5-year development periods -- as many as 22,799 families or 90,982 people were resettled in four regencies. This number was less than 5 percent of the total population of the province of Maluku in 1999. Most of them were resettled in Central Maluku (13,140 families or 52,548 people, i.e. about 7.99 percent of the population in Central Maluku in 1999). The main resettlement areas are located on Buru Island and North Seram Island.

The question is whether the presence of newcomers numbering only about 5 percent of Maluku population can cause turmoil throughout the entire Maluku province. Up to 1996 most of these newcomers were still poor and as evidence of their poverty, none of those going for the haj pilgrimage this year came from Buru Island. On the other hand, according to Kompas (June 19), the number of refugees from Maluku now in Buton regency (Southeast Sulawesi) is now recorded at some 107,000 people. Our own survey in Buton (January 2000) reveals that 53 percent of these refugees have come from Ambon City and 44 percent of them from Central Maluku regency.

The number of people with Buginese, Buton and Muna (BBM) ethnic background made up some 35 percent of the population of Ambon City in 1998 and 15 percent of the population in Central Maluku. People of BBM ethnic background dominate the modern sector (trade) in Ambon City and it is for this reason that rioting first broke out in Ambon and not on Buru Island or other places.

Development and modernization always have structural differentiation and cultural secularization as their attendant consequences. Structural differentiation takes place alongside functional specialization and turns religious elders previously playing multiple roles into the singular role of prayer leader.

Cultural secularization is a phenomenon followed by monetization and commercialization. In Maluku this phenomenon is evident from the presence of large-scale businesses comprising not only the Agency for Clove Marketing and Bufferstock (BPPC) headed by Tommy Soeharto, but also business lines owned by tycoons in forestry, agribusiness, mining and fisheries along with their supporting service enterprises such as the banking, insurance and marketing sectors. These companies bring with them managers from Jakarta. Local people cannot fill higher management positions because of their lack of education and experience. As most of the locals are not interested to take lower positions, these companies recruit people from Java or perhaps from among the resettled people in Maluku to be employed as ordinary employees, such as security guards. As a result, local people have been more marginalized than before.

M. IKHSAN

Jakarta