Villagers struggle with dark past
The Jakarta Post, Talangsari, Lampung
Talangsari was an ordinary village with ordinary people living an ordinary life.
That was until 1989, before military troops stormed the village to crush a Muslim militant group led by Anwar Warsidi that had resided in Cihideung, one of the four hamlets in the village.
A.M. Hendropriyono, then an army colonel and chief of Lampung's Garuda Hitam Military Resort Command, led the operation in which hundreds of people were killed.
According to an official statement, as many as 27 people, including Warsidi, were killed in the military attack on their compound on Feb. 8, 1989.
Villagers, however, said that more than 300 people, including three residents who were not Warsidi's followers, were killed. The three were Suwarsono, Bejo and Imam Bakri, the younger brothers of one of the villagers, Turasih,
"We believe they were also buried around here, although there were no graves. Some of the corpses were said to have been dumped into this well," another villager, Mardi, said, pointing to a well near the village mosque that is now in disrepair.
Warsidi moved to Cihideung a year before the incident and occupied a small mosque here.
According to Turasih, Warsidi's followers increased sharply in the following months and occupied land around the mosque and established the Mujahidin group.
"Some of them used lu and gue (Jakarta dialect) to address each other. They, men, women and children, arrived here at night," Turasih said.
The newcomers were easily recognizable from their attire. The men wore white and black robes while the women wore head scarves.
After occupying the mosque, they built makeshift houses around the mosque and practiced martial arts and archery.
According to Al Chaidar's book entitled Lampung Bersimbah Darah (Bloody Lampung) and Widjiono Wasis' book entitled Geger Talangsari (Talangsari Riot), most of Warsidi's people were followers of the Al-Mukmin Islamic boarding school in Ngruki, Surakarta, Central Java.
The boarding school was founded by militant preachers the late Abdullah Sungkar and Abubakar Baasyir. They fled to Malaysia shortly before the incident.
Abubakar is currently being sought after by the Singapore government for leading the Islamic militant group Jama'ah Islamiah whose members are under detention in Singapore and Malaysia for alleged terrorist acts.
Abubakar, who currently leads the Indonesian Mujahidin Council (MMI), has repeatedly denied his involvement in the militant group.
So far, only four of Cihideung's 17 families have returned to the hamlet, which was closed for almost 10 years after the incident. The four families paid village officials between Rp 250,000 (US$27) and Rp 500,000 to return to the village, Turasih said.
"The other families are still staying with their relatives in nearby districts. They don't have money to get their land back and rebuild their houses," the mother of six children said.
She claimed that none of the 17 families had any relation whatsoever with Warsidi.
The villagers, who live a simple life, are hoping for compensation from Hendropriyono, now chief of the State Intelligence Agency (BIN), to help them reclaim their land and rebuild their houses which were burned down during the bloody incident.
"We beg Pak Hendro to give compensation and rebuild our houses. It would revive our quiet village," Mardi, 60, told The Jakarta Post without mentioning the amount of compensation the villagers sought.