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Jakarta – Thousands of people attacked the homes of Madurese settlers and a police post in a new outbreak of ethnic unrest in troubled West Kalimantan province in Indonesian Borneo, residents and reports said Tuesday.
"After yesterday's burnings and attacks, residents are now worried and schools have remained closed, as have banks and shops," Priest Silitonga of the Batak Protestant church in Singkawang, the main city of the Sambas district in West Kalimantan said.
Silitonga said thousands of people attacked and burned the houses of Madurese settlers on the northern outskirts of the town on Monday, but there were no reports of human casualties.
The mobs, mostly from neighbouring towns and villages also attacked houses inside Singakawang and a local district police post and gunshots could be heard, he said.
Initial violence Monday was repulsed by security forces who fired warning shots and arrested 20 attackers, the Suara Karya daily said.
Warning shots were again fired when the attackers regrouped later in the day and attempted to storm the local district police office to free the 20. A further 38 people were arrested, the daily said. "I have not heard of any violence or heard gunshots far this morning," Silitonga said Tuesday.
The police and the military declined comment, refering queries to the military headquarters in Pontianak, the main town of the province some 145 kilometres south.
Violence pitting Madurese against Malays and indigenous Dayak tribesmen in Sambas erupted last month leaving around 200 people dead and a trail of destruction of Madurese properties and farmlands. It also forced some 29,000 Madurese settlers to flee Sambas under military protection.
Massacres, torchings, decapitation and mutilations as well as ritual canibalism of Madurese were widespread in March as crudely armed Dayaks and Malays roamed the Sambas countryside hunting down the settlers.
The Dayaks and the Madurese have been involved in at least eight major outbreaks of ethnic violence since 1968. The last clash in 1998 left some 300 dead according to official figures while independent tallies spoke of up to 4,000 dead.
Meanwhile, ethnic violence was also reported to have broken out in the Riau province in Sumatra where clashes between migrant Bugis from Sulawesi island and local ethnic Chinese left one person dead on Sunday, the Media Indonesia daily said.
The victim, a sergeant of the local sub-district military post, was stabbed while trying to halt the clash, the daily said.
The Riau violence followed an attack by a mob of 50 Buginese on a shop owned by an ethnic Chinese in Tanjungbatu. The ethnic Chinese family had on Saturday reported the son of a Buginese family for extorting money from their son.