There has been no neutral or systematic documentation thus far of the communal conflict as it unfolded in West Kalimantan between December 1996 and early March 1997. Different parties to the conflict have different parts of the picture, but a thorough chronology compiled from eyewitness accounts is badly needed. Most accounts talk of two waves of violence. The first was triggered by a stabbing in Sanggau Ledo in late December and led to a localized attack on Madurese homes that in scale was more or less comparable with earlier outbreaks in 1979 and 1983. After an uneasy calm had returned by the second week in January, a second and much more savage wave erupted, widely believed to have been triggered by a Madurese attack on the Pancur Kasih Social Work Foundation, a Catholic nongovernmental organization that runs cooperatives, a credit union, and the St. Francis of Assisi junior and senior high schools in Siantan, a northern suburb of Pontianak. The students at Pancur Kasih's schools are largely Dayak. Most observers are willing to accept that the first wave of violence was spontaneous; it is the second one that has aroused the most suspicion about deliberate incitement. Nevertheless, there are questions to be asked about both, and it is not at all clear that the Pancur Kasih attack was as clear a dividing line as it seemed at the time.
The Stabbing at Sanggau Ledo
The initial incident has been the most thoroughly documented, but even here, basic facts are contested. 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 Dayak youth from Ledo named Yukundus saw two boys whom he identified as Madurese by their accents bothering a Dayak girl. One of them was named Bakrie. Yukundus warned them several times to stop, and when they paid no attention, he intervened and knocked their heads together.18
The incident seemed closed until December 29, when the youths met again by chance at a band concert in the village of Tanjung, 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 with a sickle. The time was 1:00 a.m. on December 30. The two Dayak youths were injured in the back and stomach. They were able to run to the local police station and from there were rushedto hospital. They were treated and soon thereafter discharged, but rumors of their death nevertheless spread quickly. At about 5:00 a.m., a large crowd gathered at the Ledo police command, demanding to know whether Bakrie and his companions had been arrested, and when they did not get a clear answer, they gave the police a deadline until 12:00 p.m. to make the arrests.19
Later that same morning, the Sanggau Ledo police chief, realizing 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 reportedly to coopt Dayak community leadership.20 Two Madurese community leaders also attended the meeting, as did two local military officers. At 8:00 a.m., those present decided to have the Madurese leaders apologize to relatives of the Dayak boys. A delegation left for Serukam Hospital in Ledo, the next subdistrict over from Sanggau Ledo, where the boys were being treated, taking a van driven by Haji Zaini, one of the two Madurese.
The delegation stopped first at the police station in Ledo to coordinate with the police, military, and traditional Dayak leadership there. The father of Yukundus and Akhim was at the station, and two Madurese apologized to him and expressed their intention of visiting his sons at the hospital. As they were talking, a crowd estimated at over a hundred Dayaks wearing red head bands, a traditional sign of war, turned up, demanding retribution. (One question that has never been satisfactorily answered is who mobilized that crowd.) The two Madurese stayed inside, but the others in the station, including the father, went out to try to calm the crowd, without success. The crowd again threatened to take the law into its own hands if the police did not announce an arrest by noon.
In fact, the police had already made five arrests early that morning but were reluctant to announce them for fear the crowd would lynch the suspects. They later announced the initials of the five suspects and said that they would be charged under articles 170 and 351 of the criminal code for causing wilful injury and property damage.21 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.22
The senior Dayak member of the delegation said everyone in the station was worried that the bloody 1983 clash was about to be repeated. They sent a message to Sanggau Ledo police station warning of the approaching crowd and urging that the Madurese population be quickly evacuated to the Sanggau Ledo Air Force base, a short grass landing strip on the other side of Sanggau Ledo from Ledo. On their way back to Sanggau Ledo, they also stopped at a number of places to conduct customary ceremonies (pamabang) to placate the crowd, but to little effect.
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, new arrivals poured in later that afternoon, shouting hysterically. When the crowd's demand to meet immediately with Madurese leaders was not satisfied (police again feared a lynching), a mob broke out of the hall and headed for the markets. Towards nightfall the Dayaks headed for the largely Madurese transmigration areas of Lembang and Marabu, about five kilometers away, to hunt for Bakrie and his friends. (Bakrie lived in Lembang.) 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 marketplace, where they were met by police and customary leaders, who persuaded them to be transported back to Ledo under military guard. In Bengkayang, at about8:00 p.m., an army unit fired on a large crowd of Dayaks who were trying to attack a military post where they heard Madurese had sought refuge. They were reportedly acting on a completely false rumor that twenty-five trucks of Madurese had gathered and were getting ready to attack Dayak neighborhoods.23
The next day, December 31, the atmosphere in Sanggau Ledo remained tense, and further trouble was expected. There were rumors that a Dayak had been injured by Madurese defending themselves, and that a mato ceremony had been held in which Dayaks took vows to expel the Madurese. One source said a tariu dance had been conducted at Sanggau Ledo led by Dayak war commanders (panglima perang) from various villages, and that this dance had awakened the spirits of ancestors.24
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."25 Numbers were estimated at 2,000. Most remaining Madurese houses in the area 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. Agustinus, the Sanggau Ledo customary council member, said he suspected that non-Dayaks may have taken advantage of the general confusion to join the rampage.
Madurese living in the transmigration area near Sanggau Ledo were taken by the military to the air force base. Late that afternoon, the military in Sanggau Ledo succeeded in quieting the crowds and took them to their respective home towns in trucks. Some of those who had come down from the mountains, however, simply disappeared back into the jungle that evening. There were also reports that 500 Madurese men had not agreed to evacuate and had also gone into the forest, and that Dayaks and Madurese were hunting one another there.26
On the same day, December 31, rioting also took place in the village of Sayung, in Bengkayang subdistrict, directly south of Ledo. When Madurese sought refuge in the Bengkayang compound of army infantry battalion 641/ Beruang Hitam, hundreds of Dayaks tried to attack the compound. Military sources told Vincent Yulipin, a local correspondent, that soldiers defended their compound by firing warning shots at the ground. However, they said, some bullets "ricocheted off the rocks" and injured three (some reports said six) rioters, none of them fatally.27 News that four Dayaks had died by army bullets, however, traveled fast and further inflamed crowds in other areas. Madurese homes in the villages of Sindu, Monterado, Sungai Petak, Simpang Monterado, Nyarumkop, Pajintan and Bagak were burned.
Hearing that the troubles had spread beyond Sanggau Ledo to Bengkayang, the subdistrict head (camat) of Samalantan, to the west of Bengkayang, joined with local police and military commanders to call a meeting of Dayak and Madurese community leaders, in which Madurese were urged to surrender their knives in exchange for Dayak guarantees of security. The guarantee, however, proved impossible to honor. On the afternoon of January 1, a group of rioters from Samalantan subdistrict, some from the town itself, attacked several Madurese villages (Beringin, Jirak, Simpang Monterado, Marga Mulia and Bombai). They came by truck, carrying bottles of gasoline to use in setting fire to homes. Even though witnesses documented the names of several individuals involved, as well as the name of the owner of one of the trucks used,who happened to be a Dayak businessman in Samalantan, no arrests took place.28 A different group estimated at 500 people continued to move around the town of Sanggau Ledo, burning the homes of prosperous Madurese. Yet another group, apparently originating in Monterado, attacked Madurese settlements in Roban and Sagatani, just outside Singakawang, causing thousands of Madurese to seek refuge in the city. In Siantan, a suburb of Pontianak, masses of Madurese took to the streets, but security forces were able to prevent any major outbreaks of violence.
Madurese groups struck back, targeting the homes of the few well-known Dayak figures in Singkawang, most of them civil servants or businessmen. First to go was the home of a successful Dayak entrepreneur named Paulus Lopon Piling; it was burned to the ground on December 31. On January 1, at about 7 p.m., a truckful of Madurese from Pasiran, to the south of Singkawang, came into the city. They were led, according to one source, by a Madurese army corporal named Mis Nadin, who was normally based at the army training school in Pasir Panjang. The group attacked and destroyed the house of Yusuf Atok, a medical worker in the district clinic (Puskesmas), then burned the house of the head of the Singkawang civil registry, Antonious Alim. They stabbed and seriously wounded a retired Dayak medical worker named Konglie at his home. Then they fled, and many Dayaks in the city, fearing further attacks, took refuge in the district military command. Corp. Mis Nadin has reportedly not been seen in Singakwang since.29
On January 2, hundreds of Dayaks came to Sanggau Ledo from various directions looking for Madurese and burning their houses. As the Madurese had all been evacuated, their empty houses were easy targets. Troops from Battalion 641 blocked off all roads leading into Sanggau Ledo, an action which many thought should have been taken much earlier. Rioting also spread to the Tujuh Belas subdistrict, close to Singkawang. Again the houses of Madurese and, reportedly, of some Malays, all local farmers, were the targets. The villages of Pakucing and Bagak Sahwa were worst affected.30 The district government of Sambas, which covers Singkawang, imposed a curfew from 9:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m. Some 700 troops were put on full alert on January 2 and 3 to avert threatened revenge attacks against Christian buildings by Madurese armed with knives.
By January 3, the situation appeared to be calming down, although scattered groups still succeeded in crossing through Sanggau Ledo despite the roadblocks. Now, however, they were burning houses in the surrounding countryside. Burnings were also reported in Sagatani village, Tujuh Belas subdistrict.
On January 4, Dayak crowds in Sanggau Ledo were estimated at one to two hundred, but most of the destruction had stopped, not because of intervention by security forces but because there were no more houses left to burn.31 West Kalimantan military authorities spread leaflets from aircraft over the worst affected areas - including the subdistricts of Tujuh Belas, Bengkayang, Ledo, Sanggau Ledo, Seluas, Sambas, Pemangkat and Tebas - stating that everything was under control and urging people not to believe rumors, carry weapons or engage in criminal actions.32
By this point, the property toll was already high; the death toll was more difficult to calculate but almost certainly did not exceed twenty. A Pontianak-based Indonesian journalist on January 7 estimated that at least 1,200 houses had been totally destroyed. 33 Hundreds of cattle and fowl had been killed by the rampaging crowds, who also uprooted or burned foodcrops and other plants. Official damage figures in the Sanggau Ledo area alone were Rp. 13.56 billion (US$6 million).34 On January 13, another Pontianak journalist estimated that 1,094 houses had been totally destroyed, with 275 of those in Sanggau Ledo subdistrict, 765 in Samalantan, nineteen in Bengkayang, and thirty-five in Tujuh Belas. One mosque was burned down, perhaps accidentally, in Beringin village, and four smaller prayer houses (surau) were burned down: two in Jirak, one in Sensibu Baru, and one in Bengkayang. The number of registered evacuees had reached 6,075, of whom 5,115 were given accommodation at various military posts (the district military command, Kodim 1202) in Singkawang, Secata B in Pasir Panjang, and various subdistrict military commands), or with relatives. The remaining 960 (soon to swell to 1,103), mostly women and children, had been taken to the hostel for Mecca-bound pilgrims in Pontianak.35
The official death toll was initially put at five. On January 29, the military announced that twenty-one people were missing, although they acknowledged that the missing might have gone into the forest. Basra, an association of Madurese Islamic scholars or ulama, which sent a delegation to visit Madurese refugees early in January, said on the same day that they knew of eighteen dead Madurese.36 Another newspaper listed twenty-two.37 There do not seem to have been any Dayak deaths at this point.
On January 6, about seventy-five Madurese in Pontianak went to the provincial parliament and formally requested the government to help return refugees to their homes and to seek ways of finding compensation for their sufferings. They urged that anyone guilty of an offense be prosecuted according to the law, and that the situation be resolved so that incidents of this kind did not occur again.
Between January 5 and 8, a series of government-sponsored peace ceremonies took place in the subdistricts of Bangkayang, Pemangkat, Sungai Raya, and Tujuh Belas. A delegation from the National Human Rights Commission attended one such ceremony in Tujuh Belas on January 5 as part of a short inspection visit to the area. The ceremony was led by a traditional Dayak leader (temenggung) and witnessed by local government and military officials. It concluded with Dayak and Madurese representatives agreeing to a five-point statement that condemned the violence, renewed their commitment to the 1979 Salamantan peace treaty, said no "new arrivals" would be accommodated who lacked proper identification, banned weapons, and announced a respect for local tradition. Like subsequent peace ceremonies, however, it appeared to have little impact on reducing tensions.
Nevertheless, the worst of the violence seemed to be over. Military roadblocks remained in place on the road east from Singkawang throughout January, presumably as part of an effort to control the movement of Dayak bands. By mid-January, some of the displaced Madurese in Pontianak and Singkawang began returning home, although some went to stay with relatives while others fled to Java. Plans were announced to provide the Madurese with new, barrack-style housing at the Sanggau Ledo air base for safety, with assistance from the Social Welfare, Forestry and Transmigration Ministries.38 Yet rumors persisted that Madurese hiding in the forest were still being hunted down and killed by bands of Dayaks.
Questions for an Investigation
Even at this stage, a number of questions arise that, if answered fully by an inquiry, could help reduce some of the suspicions and recriminations that abound.
1. Why was there so little effort on the part of local police and military to stop the mobs and prevent the house-burnings?
Crowds were on the street not only in the subdistrict of Sanggau Ledo but also in the subdistricts of Ledo, Seluas, Bengkayang, Samalantan, Menyuke, and even Ngabang, closer to Pontianak. Houses were burning in the subdistricts of Sanggau Ledo, Ledo, Samalantan, Bengkayang, Tujuh Belas and the city of Singkawang. First newspaper reports said riot police (Brimob) and soldiers from Battalion 641 in Singkawang had been sent to control the disturbances on January 1.39 By mid-January, the military had brought in reinforcements from outside West Kalimantan, bringing the total number of troops available to approximately 3,000.40 But there is no evidence they acted decisively to stop the rioting even at its source, Sanggau Ledo, let alone anywhere else, except where army posts themselves were threatened. Their efforts were primarily aimed at evacuating Madurese.
Several explanations for this inaction have been proposed: that both the army and police were understaffed, poorly trained and equipped, and frightened; that the people on the streets, particularly on the road between Sanggau Ledo and Samalantan, had been so numerous ("like ants," one journalist said) that no military trucks could get through; that army commanders were worried about being accused of human rights violations; that the police, in particular, were not unhappy to see the Madurese attacked; and that a controlled disturbance, successfully settled by the local government with peace pacts, might enhance Golkar's prospects in the elections.
In light of this speculation, answers are critical. One journalist sympathetic to the Madurese victims asked some soldiers why they did not even shoot into the air to stop the attackers. They replied that they had not been authorized to do so.41 The then-regional military commander told one visitor in early January that one reason soldiers had not intervened more forcefully was that supplies of rubber bullets had just arrived from Jakarta, and there had been no chance to distribute them. The lack of proper supplies - if indeed this was a problem - might explain the reluctance of some commanders to authorize soldiers under their command to fire warning shots, since in the past, use of live ammunition had often resulted in unnecessary bloodshed.
2. Why were no questions asked and no arrests made for organizing attacks, even when the names of some of those alleged to have been involved were known?
At the end of this first phase of violence, the only people under arrest were the five youths accused of the original knifing in Sanggau Ledo. Among the possible explanations for the lack of arrests are that the police and army feared that arrests would exacerbate tensions; that the army and police were so overstretched in trying to evacuate Madurese and protect their own flanks that they had no time to investigate reports of instigators; and that with thousands of Dayaks involved, singling out individual perpetrators seemed pointless. But the impression left, in the absence of any clear information, was that the police were ignoring attacks on Madurese, and the army was ignoring attacks on Dayaks.
Both Madurese and Dayaks we interviewed believed the police had been hostile to the Madurese ever since a city-wide clash in Pontianak in 1993. At that time, a policeman who was having an affair with a Madurese woman was beaten up by her husband. A relative of the husband named Benny was arrested and died in custody, apparently as a result of torture. The Madurese community in Pontianak erupted, sacking almost every police post in the city. No policemen were killed, but relations between the Madurese and police have been tense ever since, despite the fact that there are a few Madurese on the force.
Two early incidents reinforced a feeling on the part of some Madurese that the police were not interesting in looking into attacks on them. In the first set of house-burnings on December 30 in Sanggau Ledo, for example, it was known that some of the attackers were driven around by a driver belonging to the Batak ethnic group in a Chevrolet pick-up truck with "Haleluya" written on the side. The truck was well-known in the area, and it would not have been difficult to question the driver and find out who had hired him. Other names were reportedly given to the police in Sanggau Ledo, but no action taken was taken to investigate them.
In the January 1 attack on Madurese in Sindu, Beringin, and Samalantan, one of trucks used belonged to a Dayak entrepreneur named Atet, and both he and several individuals allegedly involved in burning houses were named in a controversial (and sometimes inaccurate) chronology of events that landed its author temporarily in prison.42 Atet, and others named in the account, have since claimed they were defamed, but no official investigation of the attack has ever taken place. For the more than 1,000 Madurese made homeless in this phase of the violence, a serious effort to get at the truth is critical.43
Many Dayaks, for their part, feel that the army ignored the attacks on them. In the case of the attacks on Dayak homes in Singkawang, no effort appears to have been made by the army to question Corp. Mis Nadin, the Madurese army officer named by Dayak sources as the instigator. The Dayaks' relations with the army had also been strained since the Ngabang incident (see above in the discussion on marginalization), although the offending army unit was from Sumatra, not a local unit. It seems less plausible that the aftereffects of Ngabang led the army to protect Mis Nadin, but suspicions of favoritism on the part of government agencies, if unaddressed by the government, can help fuel communal conflict.
18 This is a version of the incident as it appears in a chronology written by a Dayak leader. See Agustinus, "Kronologis peristiwa kerusuhan sosial Kecamatan Sanggau Ledo Kabupaten Sambas," [Chronology of the incident of social disturbance in the subdistrict of Sanggau Ledo, Sambas district], unpublished manuscript, Sanggau Ledo, January 12, 1997. Another version, in an undated paper written sometime in early March in Pontianak and entitled "Fakta-fakta dari Kerusuhan Antara Etnis Madura dan Dayak" [Facts about the disturbance between the Madurese and Dayak Ethnic Groups], says a Madurese named Barr'i insulted a nephew of Yukundus named Lunpin, and after Barr'i ignored several warnings, Yukundus began to fight him. The most accurate account undoubtedly appears in the trial documents of Bakrie, which we were not able to obtain. Agustinus is the secretary of the subdistrict branch of the Dewan Adat.
21 Another report gave the names of the attackers as Subahri (Bakrie) and his friends Basri, Mahadi, Sulaiman, Teguh Santoso, Wawan and Doni Tan Lima. At least some of them were, like Bakrie, not full-blood Madurese but peranakan Madura with mixed Ambonese and Madurese parentage.
22 Personal communication from Jakarta.
24 "Peperangan masih berlangsung di pedalaman Kalbar," SiaR, March 4, 1997.
26 Human Rights Watch interview, Muhd. Ridho'i, Madurese community leader, Pontianak, January 30, 1997; see also "Peperangan masih berlangsung," SiaR, March 4, 1997.
27 Vincent Yulipin, "Tutup tahun berdarah di Sanggau Ledo," no date, approximately end January 1997.
28 Zainuddin Isman, "Kronologis kerusuhan Sanggau Ledo Kabupaten Sambas Kalimantan Barat, Pontianak," January 13, 1997, p. 3.
29 Human Rights Watch interview in Singakwang, West Kalimantan, July 24, 1997.
32 "Diharapkan Sanggau Ledo segera pulih," Kompas, January 6, 1997.
33 Yulipin, "Tutut tahun berdarah."
35 Yulipin, "Tutup tahun berdarah."
38 "Reuben Pentateuch Sambas belum kembali ke rumah," Republika, January 24, 1997.
39 "Communion di Sanggau Ledo terkendali," Kompas, January 2, 1997.
40 "Antara Sanggau Ledo dan Singkawang," Kompas, January 2, 1997.
41 Zainuddin Isman,"Kronologis."
42 Ibid. Zainuddin, as described below, was eventually arrested on a spurious charge of possessing a sharp weapon. His chronology, which was regarded as pro-Madurese, was the real offense.
43 "Dibantah, Tuduhan Lukas dan Agustinus Mengerakkan Kerusuhan Sanggau Ledo," Akcaya, March 24, 1997.