The Madura migrants' fate: A lose-lose affair
The Madura migrants' fate: A lose-lose affair
SINGAPORE: Heads you lose, tails you also lose. Cruel though this characterization of the Madura migrants' fate in Kalimantan is, it is just one more hellish postscript to the unfolding tragedy of post-Soeharto Indonesia.
Whichever way a toss could divine the future for them, the Madurese who have settled in that part of Kalimantan island since before Indonesian independence are plainly out of luck.
Their systematic hunting-down the past week by the indigenous Dayaks, many for beheading, is not even a sudden eruption. There was an attempt made by the Dayaks in 1997 to drive out the settlers, whom they see as interlopers.
After President Soeharto's ouster in 1999, more bloodletting ensued. Some 1,000 Madurese were killed in those two incidents alone; victims of every perceived sin from encroaching on ancestral Dayak land, to being too successful in making something of their new lives.
In the present wave of killings, anything from 250 to 400 persons are believed dead, and the living have been fleeing back to the safety of Java and Madura -- if they could. The Madurese would not be alone in hankering after the relatively boring quiet of the Indonesia under Soeharto.
There are two elements to this sickening display of atavistism which would dismay even those whose faith in Indonesia is fast diminishing. The reluctance of the military to intervene so far has been a monstrous callousness.
The army should be disarming the roaming gangs, or shoring up the local civilian administration by enforcing a province-wide curfew. Ceding ground to lawless gangs only seeds future upheavals.
Navy ships have been evacuating frightened Madurese, but this must come at a cost to the state resettlement policy of transmigration. Despite some negative features, the population dispersal is right in concept.
In the face of this worsening crisis, President Abdurrahman Wahid has been traveling North Africa, and warning blithely about his country disintegrating if his foes would not stop all that talk about impeaching him for alleged corruption.
Perhaps, Abdurrahman feels, the troubles in Kalimantan, Aceh, Ambon and West Papua are uncappable oil-well fires, best left to burn themselves out. These fires do not consume themselves -- as the intrepid Red Adair would attest to. This is the second, more serious act of inattentiveness to a grave emergency.
The Kalimantan killings will open up new questions about the efficacy of transmigration. This movement that began in earnest in president Sukarno's time has an economic rationale. Settlers from the densely-populated islands of Java, Bali, Lombok -- and Madura -- were offered incentives to start new growth centers in empty outer provinces in Sulawesi, West Papua, Sumatra and Kalimantan.
But under former transmigration minister Hendropriyono, the dispersal became also a security tool in fostering mixing among different ethnicities and religions to strengthen national bonds.
The persistent friction between the Dayaks and Madurese does not invalidate the policy, but emphasizes the need for cultural conditioning to go hand in hand with the land-settlement schemes.
The Kalimantan communal breakdown is not unique; Ambon, West Timor and Aceh have been parallel battlegrounds between the indigenous people and the more assertive Javanese "guests".
But, through it all, a dose of strong political leadership backed up by a supportive military is a precondition for making policies work. It almost always gets down to first principles.
-- The Straits Times/Asia News Network