Jakarta – Police fired warning shots on Friday to disperse hundreds of Dayaks who burned at least seven police traffic posts in the Borneo city of Palangkaraya to avenge the killing of four of their tribesmen by police.
Police, who had laid low since Thursday night, fired shots when the Dayaks armed with spears and swords tried to storm the home of provincial police chief, Brigadier General Bambang Pranoto, a local journalist said.
There were no reports of casualties in the rampage during which the Dayak rioters burned a police truck.
A duty policeman at Pranoto's home told AFP that the police chief and his family had fled the house before the attempted attack.
As dusk fell, Palangkaraya remained tense with mobs of Dayaks still milling around the city, another local journalist told AFP.
But Central Kalimantan military commander, Colonel Sihono told AFP that he had deployed two companies (around 230 men) of troops in response to a police request. "We are not taking over security ... we're just helping the police," Sihono said.
Earlier on Friday, some 300 Dayaks had massed outside the local parliament and urged lawmakers to press police to investigate Thursday's shootings, in which at least four of their tribesmen were killed.
Police have said five people, four Dayaks and a policeman, were killed and three others wounded in th incident which came minutes after a visit to Central Kalimantan by President Abdurrahman Wahid.
Palangkaraya police spokeswoman Andi Selvi told AFP the policeman was lynched by a Dayak mob, but denied local rumors that he had been beheaded.
Dayaks also threatened to renew their attacks on Madurese migrants, more than 50,000 of whom have fled a bloody two-week-long ethnic cleansing campaign by indigenous Dayaks, which has left some 500 dead.
The Dayaks also demanded police turn over the bodies of two tribesmen they claim were killed during Thursday's clash and were being held by police, the private SCTV television channel said.
They also demanded the release of several Dayaks detained by police over the violence in the area, the journalist said.
Wahid, speaking in Jakarta, said that two policemen and six Dayaks had been killed in Thursday's clash. "Some people tried to storm the governor's house," Wahid said.
The president also said more troops could be sent to Central Kalimantan if current security personnel could not contain the violence. "We should not worry and panic," he said, speaking after Muslim Friday prayers near his private home.
But one of the demands of the Palangkaraya protestors was that Jakarta immediately withdraw the elite police mobile brigade Brimob from the province.
Thursday's Dayak protest was staged outside the residence of the Central Kalimantan governor – while Wahid was holding talks inside – to protest Jakarta's plan to return the thousands of fleeing Madurese refugees to the province.
The state Antara news agency said that Dayaks on Friday were also burning houses belonging to settlers from Madura island in Palangkaraya.
Analysts have blamed the violence on cultural differences between the two communities as well as the dominance of the Madurese in the local economy.
Dayaks have accused Madurese of stealing their land but experts have said they lost much of it to government-sponsored logging and plantations and that Madurese have been made scapegoats.
Wahid on Friday said the conflict between the two groups was not religious despite the fact that Dayaks are mainly Christian and animist while Madurese are Muslim. "There's no religious war there. Mosques are still intact," he said.