Tensions in the province remained high, particularly in Pontianak, with rumors that Madurese would strike back in early February after Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, ended. Fears of revenge attacks became a reality on the night of January 28-29, when a group of about seventy young Madurese tried to burn down a building and set fire to vehicles in the Pancur Kasih foundation complex. A hostel next to the foundation was also attacked, resulting in the non-fatal stabbing of two Dayak girls.
Many Dayaks believe that the attack came out of nowhere, after more than two weeks of relative calm, and that no target could have been designed to cause greater outrage in the Dayak community. It set in motion a full-scale ethnic war against the Madurese that made the first wave of violence seem like minor unrest in comparison, destroyed an important dialogue that had been going on between Dayak and Madurese community leaders since early January, and left behind high levels of distrust and suspicion on the part of Dayaks toward the Madurese.
"There are only two explanations," one Dayak involved in the dialogue told us. "Either their [the Madurese] leaders have lost their influence, or the leaders themselves were involved."
But in fact, the attack on Pancur Kasih did not break the peace, which may have been illusory to begin with. There was at least one attack earlier that evening in the village of Sakek. A Dayak crowd had come to the village and set fire to houses and a small mosque (surau). One man, Pak Jeng, had gone out to confront the mob, armed with a knife. He was shot dead, and others, who were wounded, were brought to the Sudarso Hospital in Pontianak. Some of the wounded had relatives in Siantan, near the Pancur Kasih complex, so word of the Dayak attack spread quickly.
To add fuel to the fire, a rumor spread quickly that same night that a Madurese religious leader named Habib Ali, from Sei Kakap, due west of Pontianak on the coast, had been killed by Dayaks. In fact, he was alive and well, and whoinitiated the rumor and why remains a mystery. A Madurese man named Ustadz Omar Farukh was arrested (and remained in detention as of early August 1997) on incitement charges for having telephoned around to various Madurese, spreading the news of Habib Ali's death. He reportedly claims he was informed of the death by a call from a Madurese living near Habib Ali; more information may emerge at his trial.
It seems likely that the combination of the Sakek attack and the rumor about Habib Ali prompted the attack on Pancur Kasih by young Madurese living in the neighborhood. Another attack was mounted by a group of Madurese in the town of Mempawah. The group, led by relatives of Pak Jeng, the man killed in Sakek, set fire to three Dayak homes and damaged another. Several were later arrested and claimed they were beaten into making confessions.
The Attack on Pancur Kasih
It was the Madurese attack on the school and on the two young women that led to all-out war, however. According to an eyewitness whom we will call Linus, the staff had been taking turns doing guard duty, as rumors that an attack was imminent had circulated for weeks. The guard post had been in operation for a month, and every night they were waiting for an attack that never seemed to come. On the night of January 28, Linus and two others were manning the post; they stayed there until about 3:00 a.m. on January 29. They could hear the sounds from the mosque across the way, calling people to wake up for saur, the pre-sunrise meal Muslims have during the fasting month. Linus's friends went to sleep, and Linus went upstairs to his room on the floor above the main Pancur Kasih office that serves as a dormitory for some fifty students and staff. After reading a newspaper, he finally dozed off but had only been asleep for about fifteen minutes when he heard noises. He did not know whether it was from inside the building or whether there was some kind of fight going on outside. He forced himself awake and went to the window and saw a large crowd of youths, dressed as any Muslims would be returning from prayer, wearing caps, long sleeve tunics, and sarongs, and carrying knives and sickles. The courtyard in front of the office was filled with seventy, perhaps even a hundred men. (For some reason, press reports at the time reported that the attackers were masked or hooded; according to the eyewitnesses, none were.)
The attackers came on foot through a gate to one side of the building that leads into a Madurese neighborhood, and used plastic jugs to pour gasoline over and set fire to two motorcycles and a truck parked out front. Linus said he was beyond fright, so frightened that he lost all fear. He shouted and stomped on the floor to wake up those below, because forty girls were asleep on the first floor, as well as six boys and seven staff. He said he knew better than to go down and confront the youths, because "if we resisted, we'd be dead." A stone thrown by one of the attackers struck the window right near where he was standing. The group tried to burn down the building, but the fire for some reason did not take hold well, and neighbors were able to help put it out.
The crowd was only at the dormitory about fifteen minutes, and when everyone woke up, the attackers ran back through the gate and up to the hostel where women employees of the Citra Siantan store lived. Two Dayak girls, Efrosena and Elia. One of the girls was knifed in the neck as the attacker, later identified as Omar Farukh (no relation to Ustadz Omar Farukh mentioned above) seized her and cut off her hair; the other was also severely slashed. Then the attackers climbed up to the second story of the hostel, went through a window out onto the roof, and jumped down to a small mosque on the narrow street below, called Gang Selat Sumba II (Sumba Strait Alley), where they were given shelter.
The police did not take action to stop the Madurese, but Linus said he could not fault them. After he called a neighbor to summon the police, two officers came as the Madurese were running out the gate to the hostel. Linus said the Madurese put a knife to their throats and threatened them; they were so terrified that they did not dare take any action until they had reinforcements. The reinforcements did not come until 6:30 or 7:00 a.m., in part because the call for help came just as a new shift was coming on, and by the time the reinforcements arrived, the group had long since departed. Someone from the Koramil (army subdistrict command) came even later.
Linus gave the police statement at the time, but he was never called to testify as a formal witness in the investigation of those accused in the Pancur Kasih attack. Of some nine Madurese arrested, most were held briefly and released, because no one could place them at Pancur Kasih at the time of the raid. Four of the nine were held for seventeen days before beingfreed, and only two, including Omar Farukh, still face charges. He was identified by the two women in the hostel as their attacker but was not arrested until February 14.
On January 30, the day after the Pancur Kasih attack, in Peniraman, a town south of Pontianak, Madurese set up roadblocks to stop vehicles and check identity cards, looking for Dayaks and attacking them with knives. Similar roadblocks had been set up by Dayaks along a lengthy stretch of road from around Mempawah to Ngabang, with deaths of Madurese resulting. On that day, a Toyota Kijang driven by Feri Ajirin with two passengers was stopped at the Madurese roadblock; the driver was slashed and one of his passengers, Lanun, was killed.
On January 31 at 8:30 a.m. a clash took place in the town of Pahauman, apparently in reaction to the roadblock killings. The Pahauman attack was the bloodiest of the entire conflict, with 148 Madurese known dead, including fifteen members of one family, headed by Haji Dahlawi. Madurese sources said that at one point a large group of people thought they were escaping but were herded into a warehouse, which was locked and set on fire. All those inside burned to death.
Later the same day, a sixty-year-old Dayak man named Djalan, from Temiang Mali village in Batang Tarang subdistrict was killed when the bus in which he was riding was stopped and searched by Madurese in Peniraman. That evening, a traditional Dayak leader named Martinus Nyangkot, the village head of Maribas in Tebas subdistrict, Sambas district, was pulled from his car as he was returning from seeing his daughter graduate from Tanjungpura University in Pontianak. When he did not die immediately from knife wounds, his head was reportedly held under water until he drowned. A twenty-seven-year-old man named Sidik, a Madurese quarry worker from Peniraman, was later arrested and charged with murder. (Sidik has pleaded not guilty to the murder, according to his lawyer, and says police threatened to shoot him if he did not confess.) Sidik's father, a prominent Madurese from Peniraman named Haji Baidhowi, was also briefly held; the family was said to have lost more than fifty extended family members in the Pahauman attack, according to a Madurese source.
Altogether, five Dayaks died at the Peniraman roadblock, and their deaths sparked raids on Madurese in the areas where the victims lived. In Batang Tarang, for example, Djalan's village, four Madurese were killed by Dayaks on February 1, in a revenge attack. On February 1, similar attacks took place in Aur
Sampuk.
The Attack on Salatiga
A detailed account of one of the Dayak attacks - an attack which left 131 dead - comes from a displaced Madurese woman who was in Salatiga when a Dayak war party arrived. The woman, whom we will refer to simply as Ibu Hajah, lived on the main road next to the Salatiga market.44 Her husband is a driver for a contractor at the airport in Pontianak. She has lived in and around Pontianak for thirty-five years; her husband was born there.
It was Thursday afternoon on January 30 when they first heard that masses of Dayaks were headed their way. They held a meeting to discuss how women and children should be evacuated, but Pak Mastoem, a rich man in the lumber business who was one of the community leaders, insisted that they should stay and defend themselves. He made sure all the men were equipped with knives and machetes. On Friday, villagers heard again that the Dayaks were coming their way. That afternoon, a group of about ten soldiers from infantry battalion 643 arrived on a truck and offered to help move people out. Pak Mastoem rejected the offer, and the villagers set up a roadblock instead, using logs, oil drums and other obstacles.
On Saturday, at about 3:00 a.m., an advance group of Dayaks coming from Menyuke got as far as Mandor but saw the roadblock and went back to get reinforcements. At 9:00 a.m. dozens of trucks and other vehicles filled with Dayaks reached a newly-dedicated reforestation area in Mandor. Leaving the vehicles there, the attackers walked on foot the few kilometers to Salatiga, carrying traditional homemade firearms (lantak), machetes, long knives and arrows (nibung).
Ibu Hajah heard the sound of a gun about 11:00 a.m. "We thought it was the army, protecting us," she said. It turned out to be the Dayaks themselves, many of them carrying semi-automatic hunting rifles of Malaysian provenance known locally as "boomans." Most of the Dayaks were from outside the area, but a teacher whom Ibu Hajah recognized from the local elementary school was with them, pointing out Madurese homes.
Pak Mastoem and the men went out to face them, but they had not counted on the fact that the Dayaks had regular rifles (Ibu Hajah said the Madurese men in her village had been shot with lantaks before and believed they were invulnerable to them.) Haji Marsulin was the first to go out, but he was equipped only with a knife, and he was immediately mowed down by bullets. Other victims followed: most were shot first, then hacked up. She and twelve other members of her family fled out the back into the forest. The family included herself and her husband, their five children, her parents-in-law, two aunts, and another relative.
The army sent four trucks in on Saturday to help people escape, but when the Dayak attackers realized that those on board were Madurese, they began attacking the passengers with spears. No one was killed and the trucks managed to get away, but many on board were wounded. In other incident, a Javanese policeman named Gatot, married to a Dayak woman, told a Madurese family of thirteen that a vehicle was coming to rescue them, and that they should lay down their arms. He then took their knives and said he was going to get the van. A little later they saw a van arriving, and they thought it was the van they were waiting for. They rushed to get in, only the van turned out to be full of Dayaks, and every single member of the family was killed. Ibu Hajah is convinced that Gatot deliberately led the family into a trap, although there are obviously other explanations.
Ibu Hajah said the killing and destruction lasted until about sunset, and because not all the houses in the area had been burned, the Dayaks came back the next day around 9:00 a.m. to finish the job. She and her family were terrified they would be hunted down, as bands of Dayaks fanned out, looking for Madurese in the forest. After nine days of hiding, drinking stream water and having almost nothing to eat, they eventually managed to follow other people out to a place where the army could transport them to safety. Her family has now lost everything: their house, their cows and their gold. To make things worse, Dayaks have now moved onto their land and planted corn.
Singkawang, Samalantan and Bukit Permai
On February 1, the same day the attack took place in Salatiga, a Dayak man from Samalantan named Siripin was killed by a Madurese in the Beringin market in Singkawang. Despite the fact that a peace pledge had been signed between Madurese and Dayak in Samalantan on January 13, Dayak villagers from the surrounding area went after Madurese settlements in Roban, Kulor, and elsewhere. On the night of February 1, between about 9:00 and 11:00 p.m. gangs of Madurese attacked the homes of several well-known Dayaks, mostly civil servants, in the city of Singkawang and Roban. The attacks, a Dayak source said, were led by a Madurese man named Kosim, an elementary school teacher in Pakucing, Samalantan district. Four of the houses were burned to the ground, and six others were damaged.45 One of the damaged homes belonged to a Dayak ex-policeman named Rusman Duyat, who had reportedly led some of the house-burning raids on Madurese communities in the first phase of the conflict; his uncle, Dayak sources claimed, had been one of those killed in Samalantan in 1979.46
For Dayaks in the area, these attacks were a far more immediate trigger for war than the Pancur Kasih raid. One source said they perceived the Dayaks living in the city - relatively few, all well-known, devoid of the protection of a wholly Dayak neighborhood (kampung) - as defenseless targets in need of help, particularly since Siripin's killing indicated that the Madurese had no intention of keeping the peace.
On February 2, Rusman, the ex-policeman, went around to different kampungs, gathering youths to mount an attack on the Madurese living in Munggu' Pancung in Roban. In addition, a "red bowl" also had been passed from village to village, apparently beginning in Samalantan. Coming from Samalantan to Singkawang, the road to Munggu' Pancung passes by infantry battalion 641's guard post; when the raiding party, hundreds strong, tried to get around the post, the army opened fire. At least eleven Dayaks died, and some appear to have been summarily executed.
We spoke with "Lukas" (not his real name), aged twenty-five, one of those wounded in the shooting, who comes from a kampung on the Samalantan side of the post. At about 9:00 a.m. on February 2, he joined with twenty others from the kampung, riding a public transport minivan (oplet) from the road to a village called Pajintan; they intended to walk from there into Munggu' Pancung to take revenge, as Lukas put it, on the Madurese. Each was armed with a lantak (the homemade firearm); a mantau, the traditional knife; and poisoned arrows made from the nibung tree. They joined hundreds of others coming from other villages. When the first part of the crowd reached the army post, at about 2:00 p.m., they were stopped, but the group Lukas was with went around by a hill called Bukit Permai to try and break through to the road above the post. (One Dayak source, not Lukas, said they were advised to go around by the hill by a Madurese soldier named Muji Santoso, and the "advice" led them into a trap.) Two trucks of soldiers were waiting when they emerged from the woods, some armed with M-16s, others with smaller guns. Some of the soldiers were from infantry battalion 641, others were from "dodik" (komando pendidikan), an infantry training school nearby.
The soldiers fired a warning shot, ordering people to go back. People ran in all directions, and then the army opened fire. (Another man, also present at the shooting but back further in the crowd, said the army tried firing "fake bullets," probably rubber ones, for about fifteen minutes before switching to "real" ammunition.) Lukas said two people he knew, Jono and David, were killed instantly, and when he saw them fall, he and two people he was with ran to a rice paddy on one side of the road and jumped in. Five soldiers came over and ordered them to get out, saying, "If you don't come out, we shoot." They stood up with their hands in the air and were herded over at gunpoint to the main road to join about one hundred others. Soldiers ordered them all to strip to their undershorts. As they were standing, a soldier came up and without warning kicked Lukas in the face with a kind of jump kick, causing his nose to bleed. Then he kicked him hard in the chest, and Lukas fell down. As he was trying to prop himself up on his elbow, the soldier simply shot him in the right thigh, from a range of no more than one meter. Two other Dayaks shot at the same time were killed. (He did not know their names because they were not from his kampung.) Although Lukas did not know the name of the soldier who shot him, he said the man standing next to him giving orders was a Sergeant Sukampto, from East Java.
After he was shot, in the general confusion, Lukas managed to drag himself away on his elbows to the woods behind a house on the other side of the road, a distance of about fifty meters. He hid for about an hour and was then found by a policeman from West Java, whom he knew. The policeman and a friend carried him to the main road. There were corpses lying there, and soldiers were still holding about one hundred people at gunpoint. If anyone moved, a soldier would cock his gun and aim it at the offender. They waited an hour for the ambulance to arrive, and six people, including Lukas, were loaded on it. One boy named Buyung had been shot in the stomach, and his intestines were hanging out; he died as they were being taken into the hospital in Singkawang. Lukas was operated on that night, then moved to the military hospital where his wound got infected, then to the Christian mission hospital where he had to have a second operation and where he stayed for over two months. The local government paid for the costs of his hospitalization.
"Petrus" (not his real name), another person from the same village who was in the group, said there were eight soldiers doing the shooting, most of whom were Madurese, except for Sergeant Sukampto. He named Corporal Matangwar, Corporal Pardi, Roger, Muji Santoso, Lieutenant Kamas, and Sergeant Syamsul as the Madurese. (A report of a fact-finding mission carried out by a local NGO organization listed all of the above and had six other names in addition: Sergeant Bambang Sugeng, Private Santoso, Private Rusbiyono Wiyono; Sergeant Supriadi, Sergeant Taufik, and Private Suyitno.Several of these names sound Javanese. The report noted that after the shooting, they were all immediately sent to the officer training school [Sekolah Calon Bintara] in Banjarmasin, out of the conflict area.)47 There were no Dayak soldiers among those firing, and Petrus said he heard that most of the Dayak soldiers of Battalion 641 had been assigned elsewhere. He said one of the Dayaks killed - Torius, aged twenty-three, from Bagak - was shot dead as he was trying to surrender. Another killed was Rusman, the ex-policeman who had helped mobilize the Dayaks.
Petrus was one of about 120 men arrested and brought to the main road. For about an hour, he said, they were forced to stand in their undershorts while soldiers kicked them and hit them with rifle butts. The soldiers made slurs against the Dayaks the whole time. At one point, the soldiers ordered them to pray in whatever religion they wanted, implying that they were about to be killed. If it were not for Captain Mikhael, Petrus said, he was sure they would have been. But Captain Mikhael was one of "our people," a Dayak, and when all 120 were taken to the district military command in two trucks, accompanied by the captain, they were treated reasonably well. They were given clothes and food and sent home the next day.
Petrus said the corpses were taken away and just buried "like dogs" without any ceremony. Most are believed to have been buried in the Heroes' Cemetery (Taman Pahlawan) outside Singkawang. He stressed that despite all the peace treaties, he and other villagers still feel threatened by the Madurese, and that if one more Dayak has his blood spilled by a Madurese, the war will break out all over again.48 In addition to the eleven killed at Bukit Permai, eighteen Dayaks were wounded.
This incident is another for which a thorough investigation is needed. It appears that lethal force may indeed have been necessary to stop the Dayak crowd from descending on Madurese communities, but it also appears that serious human rights violations, including summary executions, took place. This and other incidents described below where the army opened fire on Dayaks have convinced many Dayaks that the army allowed Madurese officers to shoot them, intensifying their feelings of vulnerability (despite their overwhelming numerical advantage) to a Madurese attack and generating deep distrust of the military. An internal examination of policies relating to the ethnic composition of local military units in times of communal tension is needed. If it is true that no Dayak soldiers were allowed to take part in efforts to restrain Dayak war parties, while Madurese soldiers were, the policy should be reexamined to ensure that either both or neither are involved. If it is not true that commanding officers took any such decisions, that fact should come to light. And whatever decisions took place, it is imperative that the military organize meetings, not just with leaders of the two communities in Pontianak, but in villages where some of the most intense conflict originated, to explain its policies to villagers in a forum where questions can be freely asked.
Balai Karangan
Yet another group of Dayak attackers came to the village of Balai Karangan, near the border with Malaysia, on Sunday, February 2, at about 4:00 p.m. The attackers, according to an eyewitness we interviewed, came from six subdistricts including Darit, Pahuman, Sosok, Ngabang and Balai Sebut, an enormous geographic area. They came in a party that included fifteen trucks all packed with people, more motorcycles than one could count, and dozens more on foot. There were at least saw at least four women among them. The attackers were equipped with "booman" semi-automatic rifles, and the twelve Madurese who died in the attack were all shot before their heads were severed. "Haji Usman" (not his real name) lost two grandchildren, one of whom was three years old, the other nine. In earlier clashes between Dayaks and Madurese, he said, the Dayaks never got as far as Balai Karangan, and they never used guns.
He and his wife recognized many of their neighbors among the attackers, including the deputy head of Sanggau district (wakil bupati), Ahok; an employee of the subdistrict office named Mansen; an employee of the district health clinic (Puskesmas) named Senaman; and a villager named Daun. The attackers stayed in Balai Karangan for about an hour, thenmoved south towards Sanggau. They attacked Tayan, further south still, on February 3, where fifty-four people were killed, and Meliau the next day.
Haji Usman said no official wanted to help them, with the possible exception of the district head of Sanggau. He described how on the morning of the attack, he went to Ahok, the deputy district head, to discuss measures to protect the community, given other attacks in the area. "You don't need to worry, leave your weapons here," Ahok told him. But according to Haji Usman, it was Ahok himself who opened the gates to the village that afternoon and let the Dayak attackers in.
He understood that the attackers were looking for the richest people in the kampung and that four people in particular were marked for execution: himself; Haji Sayuti, a businessman, who was killed together with his wife; Haji Inom, and Haji Mucharrom (fates not clear). He said the military offered no protection, noting that Ayub, one of the residents of the kampung, was killed at the office of the subdistrict command, and one of his grandchildren died at the police post. He reported to the district military command after the attack was over, giving the names of those involved, including Ahok, and he believed they were summoned for an explanation. In fact, they were detained: another example of where clear information could help dampen some of the tensions. Two people were arrested in the shooting death of Haji Sayuti, one other in the death of his wife.
Haji Usman did not understand where the Dayaks got their guns. These are rifles that you can only buy in Malaysia, he said, and each costs about Rp.500,000 (about $250). How is it possible that so many poor Dayaks could afford these weapons, he wanted to know. And how could they afford so much gasoline for the fires they set?
Perhaps as a result of the Balai Karangan attack, the Malaysian government closed the border gate on the main Kuching-Pontianak road on February 3. It closed all twelve border gates the next day, only reopening them cautiously ten days later.
All of this took place at a time when the provincial commander for Kalimantan was announcing that the conflict was subsiding across the province. He did declare a ban on possessing firearms and carrying knives, but it was clearly not enforced.49 Indeed, the Dayaks showed little fear of the army. On February 3, for example, two soldiers from infantry battalion 641 and Sergeant Sumarsono, from the subdistrict military command of Sei Raya, south of Singkawang, were riding their motorcycles around 10:30 in the morning when they were stopped by four men with knives, led by Roberto Sihombing, a man of mixed Dayak-Batak blood. The three others were Dayaks from the village of Capkala, and they were at the head of a crowd of some one hundred people. Yelling "Where's your security now?" Roberto seized the pistol of one of the soldiers, Susilo, a Javanese, before the soldiers managed to escape. Roberto was later arrested on February 28, the other three on March 5; the information comes from the charge-sheet in their case. All were charged with weapons seizure. It is one of the few cases where Dayaks were arrested on a charge more serious than carrying a sharp weapon, and the fact that the victims were military and not Madurese is probably significant.
Army Shootings at Sanggau and Anjungan
On the same day, February 3, a large crowd of about three hundred Dayaks riding in seven or eight trucks converged on the district military command (KODIM) in Sanggau, according to a Dayak source we interviewed. They had heard a rumor, perhaps based on military evacuation efforts, that large numbers of Madurese were coming to establish a "kampung KODIM," a settlement inside the command. The trucks passed a military post at Sei Mawang, just outside Sanggau, but none of the soldiers tried to fire warning shots or otherwise stop the convoy.
When they got to Sanggau, there was a kind of traffic circle leading in to the KODIM where incoming traffic was routed to the left over the Sekayam bridge. Just before the bridge, five trucks of fully armed soldiers were waiting, and the Dayak trucks could neither go forward nor backward. A lthough the Dayaks themselves were armed and intending to attackMadurese, the witnesses we talked to considered this to be an ambush. "Why didn't they stop us at Sei Mawang?" one of them asked. The soldiers opened fire on the trucks, and the Dayaks shot back. Four Dayaks and the Batak driver of one truck were killed; twenty-six were wounded, including a soldier named Sugondo from a company of infantry battalion 642.50 Those wounded were from all over - from Noyan in the north, a subdistrict of Sanggau near the Malaysian border, to Darit, way to the west in Pontianak district - but over half were from Kembayan and Tayan Hulu.51
Another confrontation took place between Dayak and army troops in Anjungan a few days later, as hundreds of Dayaks prepared to attack Galang, a Madurese community with about one hundred families. One source said the attack was in revenge for the killings in Peniraman; others said that a false rumor had been spread that a fully armed contingent of Madurese in Galang was planning to attack Dayak communities in Karangan. (Interviews, on the basis of complete confidentiality and immunity from prosecution, with Dayaks who went to Anjungan, could help clarify this.) There is some confusion over dates, but the clash seems to have taken place on February 5.52 According to one participant, a bus and three trucks led the attack party's convoy, with people so tightly packed in the trucks that they were like match sticks.53 The full convoy included trucks, buses, motorcycles, people on foot, and one "very nice car" in which one of the Dayak "commanders" (panglima perang) rode. There were several such commanders in the group. No one was quite sure where the convoy had started out, and it picked up more and more people along the way. The military in Anjungan must have known that it was on its way because it had already passed through the subdistrict of Mandor, but no attempt was made to stop it.
"Solo," the witness, was in the third vehicle from the front, a bus owned by the Wanara Sakti company. When they reached the village of Peladis, they passed a fish pond, just before an ammunition depot for infantry battalion 643. Barbed wire had been spread along the road, and soldiers were around, but they passed through anyway. There was a second checkpoint before they got to the Anjungan market, and still no one tried to stop them. It was about 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon when they reached the barracks of combat unit (Zipur) of battalion 643 and tried to pass through. About ten soldiers opened fire, and one shot the tires of the first truck, causing it to turn over and killing the Chinese driver. Solo said he did not know what weapon was used but it made a very loud noise; he thought it was a mortar or a bazooka. The soldiers gave no warning that they were going to open fire. Some of the passengers clinging to the top of the bus fell off, wounded, but others shot back at the army. Reports that a soldier died were later denied by the regional command.
Solo and two others jumped into a ricefield to avoid the bullets. They crouched, trying to keep their heads down, because anyone who stood up got shot. Two helicopters flew overhead, and soldiers started shooting from the helicopters. He and his two companions kept quiet, they kept half-swimming through the paddy to try to find protection. The person on his left got shot in the back of the shoulder; the person on his right got shot in the leg. One of them had a gun (not a traditional firearm), but it was too wet to use. The shooting lasted about five minutes which seemed like a very long time.Solo was shot, too, but said he did not want to move, because he thought if he survived, he could keep on fighting. Then the army came to where they had fallen and told them all to put their hands in the air. Wounded as they were, they were herded out to the main road and told to lie down face down. If they looked up, they were kicked. The corpses were thrown to one side. One youth with long hair who had already surrendered was ordered to take off his pants; he was slow in doing so and they shot him. Solo said he and other Dayaks were angry with the army, because it was not the army they were at war with, it was the Madurese, and they did not understand the army's behavior.
Two contingents of Dayaks were taken to the hospital for treatment. The army picked up the wounded closest to the road, but anyone who was more than twenty meters from the road just got left. Solo counted sixteen dead and twenty-two wounded, but about 3:00 a.m. that night, another died in the hospital, so there were seventeen dead altogether. A Dayak woman who works at the hospital told Solo that she and two other Dayaks and a Batak were ordered to bury the dead at 1:00 a.m, after the corpses had already been in the morgue two days. They did so, even though it is totally forbidden in Dayak culture to bury people at night without any ceremony.
In the hospital, Solo said, the wounded were very closely guarded by soldiers from Battalions 305, 612 and 317, not the battalions that had opened fire. They wore green berets and followed people around wherever they went. Solo was not seriously wounded, but he could not go anywhere without a soldier accompanying him. He was also questioned about who his commander was, who had given orders. He told the other Dayaks there not to answer, to keep their information secret and not tell anyone. He spent a total of eight days in the hospital. When he left, he got a letter authorizing him to get free drugs. He was not required to report to the authorities.
No one has been able to make a complete list of the seventeen or eighteen dead, and no one is sure where they are buried. Nor is a comprehensive list of the wounded available, although one list of ten injured lists five men from Sengah Temila subdistrict, two from Ngabang, one each from Mandor and Sungai Pinyuh, and one from the hamlet of Tarakian, but the subdistrict is not given. As with the Bukit Permai shootings, some Dayaks who were present at Anjungan are convinced that Madurese soldiers did the shooting, although we heard no evidence to support this allegation. Solo said he was told by his younger brother, a soldier in battalion 643, that when the army was about to open fire at Anjungan, the Dayaks ("our people") were told to stay in back while soldiers from other ethnic groups did the shooting.
Other Attacks
Attacks continued, in particular in the districts of Sanggau, Sambas, and Pontianak, but a virtual press ban was put into effect, ensuring that reports were sketchy and largely confined to the foreign media.
One foreign reporter saw armed Dayaks on buses and trucks at Karangan on February 17, heading for a rendezvous at Toho to launch a mass attack on the Madurese village of Suap. They passed unhindered through an ineffectual military roadblock. An estimated 3,000 Dayaks (the number may be high) attacked Suap the next day, killing fifteen, seriously injuring five, and leaving ninety-eight homes burned to the ground.54
The next day, seventeen Madurese were reportedly killed by "hundreds" of Dayaks at Sekim I and II hamlets, in the village of Sungai Kunyit Hulu.55 A Madurese source we spoke with in July gave the death toll as twenty-seven.56 The military from Mempawah said they arrested sixty-eight of the attackers; some Dayaks were reportedly shot by the army here as well. This appears to have been the last major attack of the conflict.
Observers described corpses put prominently on display all along the road into the interior, some without heads, some with stomachs ripped open. 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 later told by the military that it was safe to return home. Reports of Dayaks eating the livers of some of those they killed were confirmed by both Dayak and Madurese witnesses. The electronic news service SiaR quoted one shocked, unnamed Kopassus officer 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."57
Throughout this phase of the conflict, the government tried to impose a press ban, with limited success. Local military officers prevented five Western journalists from leaving Pontianak to cover events in the interior, saying the restrictions were for their own security.58 In a highly unusual move, a senior official at the Ministry of Information sent a letter to Japanese journalists based in Indonesia warning them against distorted coverage and saying, "We are very worried that the mass media is being used by certain parties which do not want to see Indonesia progress."59 While it is true that in some communal conflicts, as in Rwanda, the media has been used by one side to incite its members to attack the another, there was little chance of this happening in West Kalimantan, where broadcast media are for the most part controlled by the state, and the local newspapers were doing their best to report the facts. The curbs imposed by the government may have been partially a misguided effort to prevent more violence and partially an effort to prevent a negative image of Indonesia from reaching the outside world.
The Death Toll
The death toll in the conflict has been the subject of wild speculation, ranging from 300 to 3,000 and more. The real figure is probably closer to 500.
There has been no effort to compile an accurate, official toll; rather it seems that there has been a deliberate decision not to, for fear of inflaming tensions or angering the central government authorities. On February 12, unidentified sources within the armed forces information office in Jakarta said "dozens" or even "hundreds" had died.60 The Far Eastern Economic Review quoted community leaders in West Kalimantan as saying the death toll was 200. On February 18, Maj. Gen. Zaki Anwar Makarim, assistant to the army chief of staff, confirmed that 300 had died,61 but this figure was later retracted by his superior, Gen. Hartono. Diplomats thought the figure of 300 may have been mentioned to "soften up" public opinion for even higher figures. The West Kalimantan governor later mentioned a "provisional" figure of 200 dead but added that information from the interior was still scarce.62 One Catholic priest in Menjalin estimated that perhaps 1,000 Madurese had been killed in the district of Pontianak alone, mostly on February 6 and 7, when thousands were fleeing their homes. 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. The Australian, a national daily, quoted Dayaks who estimated that their people had killed at least 600 Madurese, while more than seventy of their own had been killed by the armed forces in four separate incidents.
Part of the reason for the inflated figures was that Dayak sources frequently included people who had not returned home, who later proved to be in the hospital or in detention. One figure that became widely accepted was 1,200. The origins of this estimate were in a fact-finding trip carried out between February 7 and February 14 by a student forum, called Forum Kebangsaan Pemuda Indonesia, made up of eight youth and student groups representing different religious and politicalbackgrounds. The group counted the number of burned houses along a seventy-kilometer stretch of road between Anjungan and Ngabang, fnding 487 of them. They estimated that each house had been occupied by five people, giving a total of 2,435 people. They then checked the refugee sites and found 1,300 people from the area there. So they subtracted 1,300 from 2,435 and came up with 1,135, which they rounded up to 1,200. The figure was picked up in the alternative press as a possible death toll.63
Community leaders who have collected figures village by village come up with a lower figure. A Madurese source who has compiled figures from families lists the following:
1. Pahauman 148
2. Salatiga 131
3. Sosok 47
4. Tayan 54
5. Karangan 41
6. Pasar Ngabang 1 confirmed, perhaps a few others
7. Menjalin not clear but less than ten
8. Sakek 1
9. Sungai Kunyit 27
10. Sungai Jagoh 5
11. Sungai Duri 1
12. Malapes Sumban 3
13. Other (Senakin, Sungai Keran, Sungai Daun) about 5
That gives a total of about 465 Madurese. The Dayak lost at least the following:
1. Anjungan 17
2. Bukit Permai 11
3. Sanggau 5
4. Peniraman 5
The then-provincial commander, Maj. Gen. Namuri Anoem, said in January, just before the attack on Pancur Kasih, that he did not want to give an estimated death toll. He pointed to the furor that was raised in late 1996, following the July 27 riots in Jakarta, when the National Human Rights Commission issued a preliminary figure on disappearances that was later drastically reduced and told reporters to wait a few months.64 But a few months later, when the head of the c ommission was asked about a death toll, he said with the signing of peace agreements, the problem was settled, and it would not be a good idea to start guessing about the toll.65 The failure to do a systematic count, however, has given rise to all sorts of rumors, more among the Dayak, paradoxically, than among the Madurese. With no explanation given them for midnight burials and no discussion of who buried the dead from the various armed confrontations with the military or where, Dayak distrust of the government and the army in particular has increased.
The Displaced
As of April 1997, the press reported that 3,054 homes had been destroyed, and more than 15,000 people, almost all of them Madurese, had been displaced. Those figures were probably low, as it was difficult to make an accurate count. Some Madurese returned to Madura, others moved in with relatives in other parts of West Kalimantan, some were housed in temporary barracks at army posts and in other holding centers. The districts of Sambas and Sanggau were the worstaffected, with respectively 5,000 and 3,122 known displaced, although again, the figures are almost certainly too low.66 An Australian paper quoted Transmigration Minister Siswono Yoduhusodo as saying that at least 20,000 Madurese remained in refugee camps and were "too traumatized by the violence" to go back to their homes.67 West Kalimantan Governor Aspar Aswin said that the provincial government would try to resettle them elsewhere in the province, and that 950 houses were under construction, as well as 450 homes inside existing transmigration centers. He also noted that there was a problem with the agricultural land the displaced people had owned. If they could not or did not wish to return, the government would sell it and turn over the proceeds to the former owners, he said.68 But with reports of Dayaks already moving on to Madurese land, the problem was not going to be as easily resolved as the governor suggested. Morever, Indonesian officials at all levels also have a poor record in handling land disputes, and few landowners would like to see the government act as their sales agent.
Questions for an Investigation
1. Why did participants in attacks think they were taking part?
Rumors were swirling thick and fast in both communities, as was only to be expected during such unrest But some of those rumors were particularly deadly: for example, that the Madurese leader Habib Ali had died, and that an armed contingent of Madurese in Galang was preparing an attack on Dayaks is another. There was also a rumor at one point that the army was bringing in two boatloads of Madurese to help fight the Dayaks. Interviews by a neutral organization with some of the Dayaks and Madurese who acted on the basis of these rumors would help document where the rumors originated and how they spread. The effort should not focus on looking for a provocateur as much as trying to the dynamics of the conflict.
2. How valid are the claims of summary executions by the army and, if the claims are substantiated, what will be done to punish those concerned?
The actions of the armed forces at Bukit Permai, Sanggau, and Anjungan need to be thoroughly investigated. The fear that a unit of soldiers must have felt when confronted by 500 or more Dayaks with a reputation for cutting up their victims is understandable, but fear is no excuse for shooting someone in the act of surrendering or already in custody and unarmed. The names of the entire shooting squad who fired on Dayaks at Bukit Permai are known, as are the names of many of the Dayaks who were shot and who ended up in the hospital. It should be possible, again, for a neutral organization with no ties to any of the parties in the conflict to evaluate the validity of the allegations. If the charges of summary executions are confirmed, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
3. What happened to the dead in clashes between the army and the Dayaks?
If trust is ever to be reestablished between the army and the Dayaks, who after all constitute almost half the population of the province, answering this question is key. Where were the bodies of those killed at Anjungan, Bukit Permai, and Sanggau buried, and why were they buried under cover of night instead of being held for their families to claim them?
4. What is the ethnic composition of the security forces at the provincial, district, and subdistrict level, and what was the ethnic composition of the teams involved in trying to repel the Dayak raids?
It would be a mistake for the army to release the names of individuals because it could lead to those people being targeted for reprisals, but it is important for the military, including the police, to understand how public perceptions of the ethnic composition of the security forces can exacerbate the conflict. If, in fact, Dayak soldiers were deliberately kept out of the front lines but Madurese soldiers were not, those decisions probably need to be reviewed. If that perception is inaccurate, the military needs to be forthcoming enough with information about the real composition of forces in place at the time to convince skeptical Dayaks that their perceptions are inaccurate.
5. What did the police do with names given them by victims about individual perpetrators? What steps have been taken to inform complainants about the status of their complaints?
As in the first wave of violence, many Madurese believe that they were treated discriminatorily by police, in that no action was taken against individuals whom they reported as having been involved in house-burnings or murder. It is also true, however, that so many of the Madurese affected have become displaced persons currently living outside the area where the attacks took place that they often have no idea whether action was taken or not. Some kind of accurate information-sharing needs to take place between the government and the two communities involved.
6. Where did the "booman" guns come from?
All those we spoke with agreed that the use of these guns was an unprecedented aspect of this conflict. Are these semi-automatic rifles commonly owned by Dayaks, and if not, how were they acquired? One source said they could only be bought across the border in Sarawak, Malaysia; another that they could in fact be produced locally, but the ammunition had to be purchased in Malaysia. Knowledge of the provenance of these rifles is a key.
7. How were the Dayak attack parties organized?
Analyzing the geographic composition of the war parties is important, because while some of the geographic spread is logical - Dayaks from Menyuke going to Salatiga and then picking up new people in Mandor and elsewhere along a route on which that the "mangkok merah" or red bowl could have been passed - the mixture in others is harder to explain. It has given rise to speculation among some observers that the conflict was manipulated, because some of the Dayaks had no idea who their fellow fighters were, and it would have been all too easy to have inserted provocateurs in the crowds. One could start such an analysis by taking one group of known participants - for example, the list of wounded released by Sanggau Hospital after the February 3 incident - and interviewing each participant on the list as to how he joined, who provided transport and so on. It is critically important that these interviews not be conducted by police or army personnel, and that they be conducted under terms of strict confidentiality, but that the pattern of mobilization be understood.
44 Human Rights Watch interview, Pontianak, July 30, 1997.
45 The houses burned included those belonging to Acoi, an employee of the Sambas district government, Yakobus Tahir, an employee of the Exim bank in Singkawang, Misai Botar, head of the Siba elementary school in Samalantan, and Longsen, a medical worker. The damaged homes belonged to Dr .L. Kamdayath, a civil servant, Jumaidi, a local government official, Johanes, an elementary school teacher, Dominikus, a high school teacher, Stevanus Ju'in, a junior high school teacher, and Rusman Duyat, an ex-policeman.
46 Some Madurese took his participation as evidence of police involvement on the side of the Dayak, but in addition to whatever personal motivation he may have had, Rusman was unlikely to have been representing the police as an agency. According to one source, whose account we were not able to verify, he and his superior were caught smuggling logs in 1989, and when it was clear his superior was going to "sacrifice" him, Rusdam shot and killed him. He was imprisoned on murder charges and released in 1991.
47 "Fakta-fakta," p. 5. The list of soldiers is identical to that compiled by the Customary Council (Dewan Adat) for Sambas district.
48 Human Rights Watch interview, Sambas district, July 25, 1997.
49 "Pandam VI: Situasi Kalbar sudah mereda," Kompas, February 3, 1997.
50 The dead men were Antonius Anton, 26, from Manggang, Mandor; Luntung or Lutung, 30, from Sebudu, Kembayan; Sanding or Sundeng, 32, from Sei Dangin, Noyan; Lion, no age, from Engkasan, Tayang Hulu; and Maruli Hutahayan, 32, from Kembayan.
51 "Dafter Nama-Nama Penderita Yang Masuk RSUD Sanggau Atas Peristiwa 3 Pebruari 1997," District Government of Sanggau, Health Office (Dinas Kesehatan), Sanggau Hospital (Rumah Sakit Umum Sanggau), signed by the hospital director, Dr. Rosalina.
52 Despite the fact that the Anjungan incident is so important to the Dayaks, since more Dayaks died in it than in any other single incident of the conflict, we were unable to pin down the date with certainty. The confusion was made worse by the fact that there were in fact two stand-offs there, two days apart. One eyewitness said the two incidents took place on a Wednesday and Friday, which would be February 5 and 7, but he was interviewed more than six weeks after the event. Another account says "between February 3 and 6." Another says the major clash was on February 4, with a return visit on February 6.
53 This was a participant who was interviewed on tape on March 19, 1997, by an NGO. We listened to the tape and talked to another person involved, but did not directly interview this eyewitness.
54 "Fight to the death for tribal rights," Asia Times, February 20, 1997.
55 "Upacara di sini, konflik di sana," D & R, March 1, 1997.
56 Human Rights Watch interview, Siantan, July 30, 1997.
57 "Peperangan masih berlangsung di pedalaman Kalbar," SiaR, March 4, 1997.
58 "Indonesia warns Japanese media over coverage of unrest in West Kalimantan," Agence France Presse, February 17, 1997.
60 Agence France Presse, February 12, 1997.
62 "Gubernur Kalbar: korban tewas 200 orang," Media Indonesia, February 26, 1997.
63 "Masalah Daerah Jangan Ada Campur Tangan Luar," Akcaya, March 6, 1997.
64 "Belum Ada Kepastian Korban Jiwa," Akcaya, January 29, 1997.
65 "Komnas Tak Utak-atik Soal Korban Kerusuhan," Akcaya, March 16, 1997.
66 "3054 Rumah Rusak," Akcaya, April 2, 1997.
67 Louise Williams, "Migrants to be sent home after ethnic war," Sydney Morning Herald, April 16, 1997.
68 "Sekitar 20.000 Pengungsi Kalbar Enggan Kembali ke Permukimannya," Media Indonesia, April 2, 1997.