Down to Earth and TAPOL express deep concern about the horrific violence and ethnic cleansing in Central Kalimantan

Violence has again erupted between Dayaks and Madurese, this time in Central Kalimantan. Groups of Dayak men have descended on settlers from Madura, driving them from their homes, killing and burning houses to the ground. The conflict broke out in the town of Sampit on Saturday night, 17th February, when a house belonging to a Dayak was burnt down.

Settlers from Java and Madura were suspected. Several hundred indigenous people soon took revenge by burning settlers' houses. Six people died. The violence spread rapidly into neighbouring towns and villages and as far as Palangkaraya, the provincial capital, 220km to the east. Estimates of the human costs vary widely. Local sources state that over the ten day period there were up to 700 deaths and as many as 57,000 people – mostly Madurese – have fled their homes. Countless houses and other property have been burned.

By March 2nd, the violence had subsided sufficiently for Vice- President Megawati to make a 30 minute visit to a refugee camp in Sampit.

However, the relative calm was only because most of the Madurese immigrants had sought sanctuary in camps or evacuated to Java. Officials in other districts of Central Kalimantan have refused to accept refugees for fear that the violence will follow. The authorities in Barito Utara, location of the disastrous million hectare swamp rice project, have been listing the ethnic origin of all settlers and transmigrants and instructed all Madurese to leave the area by March 2nd. A wave of ethnic cleansing is now underway.

Conditions in the refugee camps in Sampit are dreadful. Supplies of water, food and medicines and sanitation are totally inadequate. There is a high risk of diseases such as dysentery, cholera and TB. Some people have died already. The governor of Central Kalimantan claims that 24,000 Madurese have left Kalimantan during the past week, mainly by ship to East Java and hopes that the rest will have gone by the end of next weekend.

Violent confrontations between the indigenous Dayak people and Madurese settlers in Kalimantan occurred under Sukarno, through the Suharto era and now under Wahid's government. In Central Kalimantan last year, four people died in incidents in Kumai in August and in Ampalit in December; much property including homes and vehicles was also burned. Clashes go back to the 1950s in neighbouring West Kalimantan. In late 1996/early 1997 violence between these two groups caused at least 600 deaths. Three years later there are still an estimated 40,000 Madurese refugees living in wretched conditions in 'temporary' camps in West Kalimantan's provincial capital Pontianak.

Successive governments have done nothing to address the roots of the problem. Typically, the killings only stop once the incomers have been driven out of one district. A well-publicised peace ceremony of government officials and prominent leaders of Madurese and Dayak communities is held. National and international reporters stop filing stories about headhunting and other atrocities and move on to the next war zone, while the authorities behave as if the conflict had been resolved – until the next outbreak.

A major cause of the conflict between indigenous Dayaks and Madurese settlers – and other ethnic conflicts in Indonesia – has been the 'development' that the Suharto regime promoted for over thirty years.

Natural resources, including Kalimantan's forests and minerals were parcelled as concessions for a powerful business elite. The customary landowners – the indigenous Dayaks – were systematically denied their land and resource rights. They have had no recourse to legal action to defend their rights since, under Indonesian law, forests belong to the state.

Tropical rainforest was turned into plywood, veneers and sawn timber for export in the name of development. Large timber companies made substantial profits and moved on to invest in plantations, banking and real estate, becoming giant conglomerates. The natural wealth of Kalimantan flowed through the hands of Suharto's family and their business associates and helped to fuel Indonesia's economic boom which lasted until the mid 1990s.

Much has changed in Indonesia since the Asian economic collapse, the fall of Suharto and a new democratically elected government, but the model of economic wealth driven by the ruthless exploitation of natural resources remains intact. Under new regional autonomy legislation, districts must raise sufficient income from natural resources under its control to pay for public services, support the bureaucracy, make a profit for local elites and send revenues to Jakarta.

The international community has supported this. The IMF's 'economic rescue package' promotes exports of timber, minerals and plantation crops such as palm oil to balance Indonesia's financial books. This includes paying off international creditors who were so keen to lend during the Suharto years.

The World Bank funded the Indonesian government's transmigration programme for a number of years and, with the Asian Development Bank, supported an estate crop system which depends on transmigrant labour.

The various Dayak tribes have been subjected to enormous, rapid change. Traditional lifestyles have been almost wiped out within one or two generations in many areas. The Dayaks cannot make a living from agro-forestry and small-scale logging once the logging companies have stripped the most valuable timber, especially once plantation companies move in to clear what remained. The commercial loggers and the oil palm estates which replace them prefer to use migrant labour rather than employ Dayaks. Many are 'spontaneous' migrants – people other islands seeking new opportunities to get land, set up a small business or trade.

Central Kalimantan where the latest bout of violence erupted exemplifies these problems. The local economy depends on timber and plantations.

The district of Kotawaringin Timur, of which Sampit is the capital, covers about 5 million hectares, nearly all of which was forest thirty years ago.

Now only 2.7 million ha is designated 'forest land'. The rest has become agricultural land, plantations, settlements or unproductive scrub and grassland. Only 0.5 million ha is classified as 'protected forest' and local people are prohibited by law from using this to make a living.

Over 1 million hectares of the remaining forest is to be 'converted' to estate crops. Illegal logging is rife and the forests will be commercially logged out within ten years. Local people have little to show in return for the forests they have lost. Most live below the official poverty line.

Sampit, a thriving port town, is the centre of the legal and illegal timber industry and the trading and administrative centre for the area.

Almost all these activities are dominated by outsiders. Sampit has the air of a booming frontier town but for all its apparent wealth its infrastructure is poor: the electricity supply is intermittent and there is a lack of clean drinking water. There is just one asphalt road which cuts east-west across the district from Palangkaraya to Pangkalanbun and this is in very poor condition due to the heavy traffic of logging trucks. Sampit's 'get rich quick' atmosphere attracts migrants. Corruption is everywhere. The local police who used to levy a 10% tax on tourists are now said to be soliciting extra income from refugees desperate to leave Kalimantan.

The mobs of angry local youths who appear in photographs bearing severed heads on spears are being portrayed as Dayak warriors, head hunters or savages. While they are carrying out ethnic cleansing, they are – in effect – the victims of the destruction of their ethnic identity.

'Development' has eroded traditional lifestyles and undermined the authority of community leaders. It has offered young indigenous people little in return. The majority have only had a few years of primary education, due to lack of schools and the money to pay fees. They are ill-equipped to compete with migrants. Most rely on poorly-paid manual work and casual employment.

A whole generation has been promised a brighter future firstly through Suharto's Pancasila, then through reformasi and now demokrasi. Yet most people have remained poor and powerless. As in other areas where 'horizontal conflicts' have broken out, people in Central Kalimantan without power are turning on other groups because they are frustrated and do not know who else to blame for their day-to-day misery.

There is little doubt that certain individuals and factions benefit from such conflict and lawlessness both locally and nationally. The military are foremost among these. It was not helpful of President Wahid to order several battalions of special troops to be dispatched to Central Kalimantan while on yet another international trip. Nothing has been learned from the tragedy of the Moluccas where the intervention of the military has intensified the conflict between two communities. Military solutions such as a state of emergency or orders to shoot on sight will not solve anything.

We condemn the local police for colluding in ethnic cleansing. They have stood by while Dayak youths terrorise and murder. We also condemn the local authorities who consider that helping the Madurese to leave is the only solution. Indonesia is a multi-ethnic society and communities must find ways of living together peacefully. More effort needs to be made by schools, religious, youth and community leaders and local authorities to break down the long-standing hostile perceptions which the Dayaks and Madurese have of each other. We commend initiatives such as those in Yogya, where Madurese and Dayak students have jointly expressed solidarity, understanding and mutual support during the current violence and urged their communities back home to find peaceful solutions.

Action

Tapol and Down to Earth:

• Call on all parties immediately to stop the violence;
• Call on the local police to fulfil their responsibilities to enforce the law and prevent further violence;
• Call on grassroots community leaders from both sides of the conflict to meet and find ways of preventing further conflict;
• Call on the governor of central Kalimantan and district heads not to attempt to resolve the problem through the mass eviction of the Madurese, but to promote genuine reconciliation between the two groups;
• Call for a proper investigation into the causes of the conflict by an independent body such as the National Commission for Human Rights, and for those responsible for the killings to be brought to justice;

The following measures need urgent attention to address the underlying causes:

• Recognition of indigenous peoples' customary rights over land and resources;
• Reform of Indonesian land laws and forest and other sectoral laws which violate indigenous rights;
• A stop to all permits for the conversion of natural forest to large-scale plantations;
• An immediate two year moratorium on all logging, as proposed by Indonesian civil society groups.