G'Day Americans,
It's easy to make light of Dayaks returning to type and headhunting.
However this issue(s) is seriously destabilising for Indonesia & for
the region.
Indonesia has a policy of resettlement - Madurese to Kalimantan and
others to Irian Jaya etc. It's a way of coping with lots of surplus
citizens.
Tensions have been perculating until now they are exploding. This
unsettlement of the settlers means evacuating 25,000 - 50,000 souls.
(probably more). The Indonesian armed forces have a difficult time
handling the fiasco. Where do you take so many settlers? To Java.
Then where?
Religious tensions in places like Aceh etc compound the Indonesian
Nation's struggling to contain it all. This place is a couldron of
ethnic tensions that'll make the Kosovo cleansings look like a Sunday
walk in the park...
Meanwhile in OZ we wonder what next...
Regardz from Down Under
-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 28, 2001.
'They fell straight away as they were chopped'
By John Aglionby, in Parenggean, Borneo
When migrants from Madura gathered in the village of Parenggean at
7pm on Sunday they were told they would be evacuated to the refugee
camp in Sampit, 100 kilometres south.
Instead of being taken to safety, 118 of the 392 Madurese who were
hoping to escape ethnic cleansing by the indigenous Dayaks were taken
down the road to a school playing field. There they were forced off
the trucks and hacked to death.
"It was crazy, it was so sadistic," said Hairul Saleh, who watched in
horror from his home 20 metres away. "They had no idea what was
happening to them. They clearly thought they were being taken to
Sampit."
Mr Saleh's friend Marjo, who watched the carnage with him, added: "As
they got down from the trucks, they were killed straight away ...
There was no way they could have run away. They fell straight away as
they were chopped. Some of them were slashed up to 10 times."
The slaughter was illuminated by nothing more than truck headlights
and a few torches - the Dayak thugs had stormed the village
electricity station beforehand, taken its staff hostage, and switched
off the power.
Mr Marjo and Mr Saleh saw three trucks arrive, and their occupants
murdered in the same brutal way. Then, just as the occupants of the
fourth truck were being murdered, about 45 minutes after the first
killing took place, something akin to divine inspiration occurred,
said Rukmana Priyatna, the sub-district chief.
"Someone screamed out: 'Special forces troops are coming.' The
executioners ran off, which gave the [Madurese] the opportunity to
run as well."
For some reason the Dayaks, who came from a neighbouring area,
regrouped but decided that they had sated their bloodlust, and so
spared the Madurese still waiting in the village.
The 60 Dayaks, who were led by a man called Ibur and a Government-
appointed neighbourhood chief, calmly returned to their trucks and
drove off.
Mr Priyatna returned almost immediately to the killing field. "The
first thing that struck me when I reached the football field was the
murder of the babies, the old people and the women," he said. "They
were all still there. They were all piled up together. About six had
been beheaded."
Mr Priyatna had convened a meeting on Sunday morning in an attempt to
prevent more deaths in his sub-district.
"The attitude of the Dayak community groups was that any remaining
Madurese should be murdered, whereas my attitude was that they should
not live here but that they should be allowed to stay alive," he said.
The compromise reached after two hours of debate was to give the
Government and security forces five days to evacuate the 500 or so
Madurese thought to be hiding in the jungle. Officials relayed the
news to the Madurese over mosque loudspeakers.
"The announcement encouraged all those refugees in the forest to come
out and that the local community would help them and give them food,"
Mr Priyatna said.
Within four hours 392 people had come out of hiding and been taken to
Parenggean.
Mr Priyatna's well-laid plans turned to tragedy when Ibur and 30 men
armed with machetes, spears and a few home-made shotguns arrived from
a neighbouring district, Kuala Kuayan, and then two more trucks of
heavily armed Dayaks arrived from Sanggai to reinforce them.
"It was as if they were in a trance, drunk, unaware of what they were
doing," Mr Saleh said. Six police officers were present, all armed
with M-16s, but they ran off scared.
The Guardian
Borneo
tale
Borneo
police get order to shoot on sight
-- Pieter (zaadz@icisp.net.au), February 28, 2001.
