HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH ASIA recounts the story of the worst communal violence Indonesia has seen for decades.

On the evening of December 6, 1996, young people from nearby towns and villages gathered for a music (dangdut) concert in the town of Ledo, in a hilly subdistrict east of Singkawang towards the border with Sarawak. The concert was part of the ongoing election campaign of Golkar, the ruling party. A teenage boy from Sanggau Ledo named Bakrie took hold of a Ledo Dayak girl's hand, but she resisted his advances. Bakrie is said to be of mixed Madurese-Dayak blood, but Dayaks identified him as Madurese. When a Dayak youth from Ledo named Yukundus urged Bakrie to be less rude, Bakrie and a friend started a fight with Yukundus, which they lost.

From behind

Three weeks later, on the night of December 29-30, the boys met again by chance at another dangdut concert, in Tanjung village, also in Ledo subdistrict. This time Bakrie had about nine friends with him, who immediately set upon Yukundus and his brother, Akhim, attacking them from behind. The two were injured in the back and stomach. They were able to run to the local police station and from there were rushed to hospital. They were treated and soon thereafter discharged, but rumors of their death nevertheless spread quickly.

The next morning, the Sanggau Ledo police chief, realising the explosive potential of the knifing incident, called an immediate meeting of the Sanggau Ledo subdistrict branch of the Dayak Customary Council (Dewan Adat Dayak), a rather ineffectual grouping formed some years ago at government initiative to accommodate Dayak community leadership. Two Madurese community leaders also attended the meeting, as did local military officers. At 8.00 am those present decided to have the Madurese leaders apologise to the families of the Dayak victims.

Head bands

A delegation left for Ledo Hospital at 8.30 am, intending to meet the victims. However, at the Ledo police station where the group stopped en route, they met the family of Yukundus and Akhim, who were demanding the arrest of the attackers. As the delegation was still discussing the issue with the family, a crowd estimated at over a hundred Dayaks wearing red head bands, a traditional sign of war, turned up at the police station, demanding justice for the victims. All those within the station, except the Madurese, went out to try to calm the crowd, but to no avail. The crowd threatened to take the law into its own hands if the police did not announce an arrest by midday that day.

In fact the police had already made five arrests early that morning but were evasive about announcing them for fear the crowd would lynch the suspects. Police evasiveness, however, only inflamed the growing crowd, which soon set out on foot for Sanggau Ledo, some twenty kilometers away. There, according to one report, posters were put up urging eviction of the Madurese and demanding that Dayak land be returned.

When the crowd from Ledo, which had grown to about 400, arrived in Sanggau Ledo, customary leaders succeeded in ushering them into the subdistrict's community hall and gave them water and rice. However, later that afternoon, new arrivals poured in, shouting hysterically. When the crowd's demand to meet immediately with Madurese leaders was not satisfied (police again feared a lynching), it broke out of the hall and headed for the markets.

Burned

Towards nightfall the Dayaks headed for the largely Madurese 'social' transmigration areas of Lembang and Marabu to find the Madurese attackers. There they burned down several houses and injured one person, although most of the inhabitants had already fled. As darkness fell, they returned to the market place, where they were met by police and customary leaders, who persuaded them to be transported back to Ledo under military guard.

The next day, December, 31, the atmosphere in Sanggau Ledo remained tense as further trouble was expected. There were rumours that a Dayak had been injured by Madurese defending themselves, and that a mato ceremony had been held where Dayaks took vows to expel the Madurese. One source said a tariu dance had been conducted at Sanggau Ledo led by chief warriors (panglima perang) from various villages, and this dance had awakened the spirits of ancestors.

Indeed, about 10:00 a.m., an angry crowd of Dayaks came in from Siluas, about twenty-five kilometers northeast of Sanggau Ledo. It was soon followed by another crowd from Ledo. Each shouted war cries to the other and repeated the cry, 'Out with the Madurese!' over and over in a tone one source described as 'hysterical.'

Non-Dayaks

Numbers were estimated at 2,000. Most remaining Madurese houses were burned at this time, or simply destroyed if they were close to the mosque or the markets, perhaps indicating some sensitivity to the possibility that fire might spread to places of religious or commercial importance owned by other ethnic groups. One customary council member said he suspected non-Dayaks may have taken advantage of the general confusion to join the rampage. Madurese homes were not the only ones burned - one report said some houses belonging to Javanese transmigrants may also have been burned.

As rioting spread to surrounding towns, security forces attempted to evacuate all Madurese in a large radius from Sanggau Ledo. The evacuees were flown by light aircraft to Pontianak. Those evacuated from Samalantan, Bengkayang and Tujuh Belas subdistricts were taken to nearby Singkawang by road. By January 4, the number of registered evacuees had reached 6,075.

The government sponsored a peace ceremony on January 5 but, like subsequent ceremonies conducted on February 18 and March 15, it appeared to have little influence in reducing tension.

Toll

By the end of January, over 1,000 homes had been damaged or destroyed. Hundreds of cattle and fowl had been killed by the rampaging crowds, who also uprooted or burned food crops and other plants. Official figures of damage in the Sanggau Ledo area alone were Rp 13.56 billion (AU$7.5 million).

The official death toll was initially put at five. On January 29, the military announced that twenty-one people were missing, although they added that the missing may have gone into the forest. This death toll was no doubt too low at the time and increased sharply thereafter.

Military roadblocks remained in place on the road east from Singkawang throughout January, presumably to try to control the movement of Dayak bands. By the end of January, there were tentative signs of calm, and it appeared that this wave of violence was ebbing or over. Some of the refugees in Pontianak and Singkawang were said to have returned home, although some had gone to stay with relatives while others had fled to Java.

Revenge

Tension remained particularly high in Pontianak with rumours that Madurese would strike back after Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, ended in early February. Fears of revenge attacks became a reality before dawn on January 28, when a group of thirty to forty hooded men tried to burn down the Pancur Kasih Foundation (YKSPK), a Catholic non-government organisation (NGO) based in Siantan on the north side of Pontianak.

Further revenge attacks followed. Several Dayak houses were burned down in North Pontianak, Mempawah and Singkawang at this time, and a ninety-year-old Dayak man was stabbed to death in North Pontianak. The driver of a minivan and a passenger were dragged away and stabbed by Madurese after the vehicle was stopped en route to Sanggau Ledo. On January 31, a Dayak named Martinus Nyangkot, the customary leader and village head of Maribas, in Tebas subdistrict, was attacked and killed while returning to his home with his daughter.

These attacks had the effect of unleashing a second, and much worse, wave of Dayak violence against Madurese. The military announced a curfew in the city of Pontianak and surrounding districts and in Singkawang, which stayed in effect for nearly a fortnight.

Second wave

Gangs of Dayaks armed with spears and homemade traditional muskets (lanta) set up roadblocks along the main highway running into the interior of West Kalimantan, especially from near Mempawah to about Ngabang. The military was still trying to clear these barricades on February 7. Soldiers also tried to give a proper burial to the many bodies scattered along that road.

Where the first wave of violence had been concentrated in the area between Sanggau Ledo and Singkawang, the second broke out sixty kilometers further south, along the road into the interior as far as Sanggau, that is, in the area dominated by plantations and transmigration areas.

Extra troops were brought in from outside, bringing the total available to approximately 3,000. However, this number was still inadequate to control the interior, which remained in the hands of Dayak rioters throughout at least the first two weeks in February. Soldiers claimed to have confiscated 200 traditional Dayak firearms but otherwise had their hands full protecting Madurese refugees.

One foreign reporter saw armed Dayaks on buses and trucks at Karangan on February 17, heading for a rendezvous at Toho to launch a massed attack on the Madurese village of Suap. They passed unhindered through an ineffectual military roadblock. Some 3,000 Dayaks attacked Suap the next day, killing fifteen, seriously injuring five, and leaving ninety-eight homes burned to the ground.

Head-hunting

Observers noted corpses prominently put on display all along the road into the interior, some without heads, some with stomachs ripped open apparently as a result of revived head-hunting ceremonies. One report quoted eyewitnesses who had driven through the area saying the stench from 'hundreds' of rotting headless corpses along the road between Anjungan and Mandor was overwhelming.

Many of the victims were apparently Madurese who had been evacuated in the first wave of violence but who had been told by Abri that it was now safe to return home. The young Dayaks killed Madurese indiscriminately, including children and pregnant women. There were even reports of Dayaks eating the livers of some of those they killed.

One shocked Special Forces officer was quoted as saying: 'I have done duty in Cambodia, Bosnia and East Timor, but nowhere was it like this. In Bosnia, Serbs massacred Bosnians but they didn't eat their victims'. Military hospitals were reported to be full of casualties, but journalists were refused access to verify the stories.

One Dayak tribal elder said openly: 'The Dayak people are saying to the government that we are not prepared to accept the presence of Madura people in Kalimantan, particularly West Kalimantan. We are not going to rest until we have driven them all out of our rightful homeland.'

Thousands of Madurese once more fled to military bases wherever they could find them. A figure of over 25,000 refugees has been mentioned, while 5,000 may have been repatriated to Madura by the army. Dayaks in urban areas fled to the interior to seek safety with their tribal kinsmen.

Opened fire

As during the first wave of violence, soldiers guarding the refugees or manning road blocks opened fire several times on groups of attacking Dayaks. The worst of these took place at an army engineers (Zipur) post at Anjungan, near the beginning of the road that leads into the interior close to Mempawah. On February 3, a group of Dayaks attacked the post, believing Madurese had taken shelter there. The soldiers opened fire and killed seventeen, injuring thirty. The dead, which apparently included some Madurese, were buried in a mass grave at Mandor.

More Dayaks were killed at this same army post in the late afternoon of February 4 when two trucks full of Dayaks tried to run a roadblock that the soldiers were manning. The soldiers shot at the tyres, causing both trucks to turn over. Several passengers were injured and killed as a result. The soldiers then allegedly opened fire at the survivors with machine guns. Altogether an estimated 100 Dayaks were reported killed, and their bodies left to decay in a ricefield nearby.

On February 6, more Dayaks arrived at the post to protest the massacre two days earlier. The local military commander forbade the army engineers to leave their post to confront the crowd, and there were no further reports of injuries.

Officials were guarded about releasing casualty figures. On February 18, Maj-Gen Zaki Anwar Makarim, assistant to the army chief of staff, confirmed that 300 had died, but this figure was later retracted by his superior, Gen Hartono. One Catholic priest estimated that perhaps 1,000 Madurese had been killed in the district of Pontianak alone, especially on February 6 and 7, when refugee movements occurred in the thousands there. Another source thought several thousand Madurese may have died, as against almost 200 Dayaks, the latter largely as a result of shooting by the military. Medical sources in Pontianak said 1,500-2,000 people had been killed.

By early May no one had appeared in court over the violence. Hundreds were said to be in military detention.

Identity

Dayak young people, in a search for identity, have revived the most militant aspects of their traditional culture. Throughout the protracted violence, several Dayak traditions related to war emerged. One was the ubiquitous appearance of red headbands, a sign of war. Another was the emergence of a 'warrior chief' (panglima perang). Apparently this is a charismatic gift, only recognised at times of crisis. They have gifts of mystical transport as well as invulnerability and played an important role in mobilising the aggressive energies of militant Dayak youth.

Another tradition that served as a mobilising element was the 'red bowl' (mangkok merah), a porcelain or clay bowl containing rice, leaves, and water coloured by chicken or other blood. Passed from village to village as a call to arms when a Dayak has been hurt or to indicate a threat or danger to the community, the bowl reportedly has great power to stimulate aggressive solidarity among men of fighting age. Reports from both the military and local Dayak sources said that by late February, the cup was being passed from one community to another throughout the four provinces of Kalimantan. Taken together, these traditional elements give the impression of a tribal war, declared against outsiders.

Government

The role of the Indonesian government in the outbreak and management of the violence in West Kalimantan is complex. There is nothing to suggest that the initial outbreak of violence in Sanggau Ledo was anything other than a spontaneous reaction of local Dayak youths to the stabbing of a group of their friends.

The fact that the violence spread so fast and so far, however, requires more explanation, and does appear to be directly linked to government development policies.

Over the last two decades, Dayak land claims have been ignored in favour of Jakarta-based business interests and government development imperatives. Their sources of subsistence and cash income have been systematically depleted, and their lifestyle and culture have been treated with disdain as primitive and destructive in comparison with that of coastal Malays or immigrants from Java and Madura. Unless the discrimination issue is addressed, particularly with respect to land, the likelihood of continuing violence is high.

The government has failed to provide any effective forum for Dayaks to defend their claims to land or to challenge to government's awarding of that land for commercial purposes.

Once violence broke out, the government reacted in a way that did little to reduce tensions. Despite the numbers of troops involved, the army seemed singularly ill-equipped either to protect Madurese or to prevent Dayak attacks against them. The deaths of Dayaks from army gunfire also clearly need investigation.

The government's attempt to muzzle the press, an almost knee-jerk reaction to any hint of social unrest in Indonesia, was a miscalculation, as it allowed rumours to spread without any facts available to check them.

Extracted from a forthcoming report by Human Rights Watch Asia.