Our refugee problem
Our refugee problem
With unrest continuing to fester in several areas in this
country -- East Timor, West Kalimantan and Maluku in particular
come to mind -- the authorities seem to be having difficulty
keeping track of the refugees forced to flee the troubled areas,
not to mention providing adequate assistance for the victims.
To mention an example, some field workers estimate the number
of refugees from Ambon, Maluku, who are temporarily sheltered on
Buton island, Southeast Sulawesi, at about 40,000. This seems to
be a little on the conservative side, considering that on one
single day alone at the beginning of last month thousands of
refugees were reported to have landed at the island's Murhum
Port. A Cabinet report at about the same time put the number of
refugees on Buton island at a little less than 9,000.
In West Kalimantan, where vicious ethnic clashes have in past
weeks forced tens of thousands of settlers of Madurese ancestry
to flee their lands and homes, provincial authorities have made
plans to "relocate" -- apparently on a permanent basis -- some
7,000 Madurese families to an as yet undisclosed island off the
West Kalimantan coast. These are some of the victims of the
ethnic unrest in the province's Sambas regency, where clashes
among Madurese settlers and the local Dayak and Malay communities
are reported to be continuing sporadically to this day.
Many thousands more of those unfortunate people have since
attempted to return to their home island of Madura, near Java's
eastern tip. But a reliable estimate of the number of refugees
who have since the beginning of the unrest fled the troubled
areas to find shelter elsewhere is difficult to reach. All of
which complicates the task of alleviating their suffering.
Regardless, there can be little doubt that for all of those
uncounted thousands of people, the trauma of the past weeks is
something that few of them are likely to forget for the rest of
their lives. There is, unfortunately, nothing that can be done to
undo the events of the past. What can and must be done is ensure
that every possible effort is made to help those who have
survived the carnage -- a formidable task, to be sure, given the
limited resources available.
The plight of the refugees from Ambon on Buton island provides
a telling example. The regency, with an indigenous population of
less than half a million, is finding its resources stretched to
the limit trying to look after the tens of thousands of refugees.
Though almost all of them are descended from Butonese, but have
lived for several generations in Maluku, little help has reached
them either from the government, from the locals or from
humanitarian relief organizations.
In the absence of adequate assistance, most of the refugees
live in tents and makeshift shelters, subsisting on whatever
daily food handouts are made available. Medical care is similarly
in short supply. Many refugees have tried to improve their
situation by doing laboring work or finding other means of self-
employment -- an admirable effort that, unfortunately, further
stretches the already limited sustaining capability of the
regency's resources.
The important lesson that all this teaches us is that -- aside
from the emotional suffering, the material loss and the political
and social impact the unrest in several areas of the country
brings -- the dislocation of so many thousands of Indonesians
from what has for generations been their adopted homeland
constitutes a problem that deserves to be thoroughly resolved
with good judgment.
In order for this to be effective, such a solution would have
to be the result of fair and comprehensive efforts to promote the
merging of migrants into local communities. Minimizing religious
and ethnic rivalry appear to be essential factors in this. It is
to be hoped that the calamities of the past weeks will have
taught us that something is quite wrong with the way we handled
population resettlement in the past.