Date: Saturday, 10 March 2001 11:11:53 -0800 (PST)
By PETER CAREY, Asian Wall Street Journal March 5, 2001
(Editor's Note: This is an opinion piece from Tuesday's Asian Wall Street
Journal. Mr. Carey is a
fellow of Trinity College, Oxford University, where he specializes
in Southeast Asian history.)
The specter of ethnic cleansing has once again returned to haunt Indonesia. In the last two weeks indigenous Dayak warriors have killed as many as 1,000 Madurese settlers and forced 30,000 to leave the province of Central Kalimantan. Some Dayak leaders are warning that they will not rest until every Madurese has been expelled from Kalimantan. This is not a new phenomenon. In 1997 and 1999, during the upheavals which accompanied the fall of Suharto's "New Order" regime, thousands of Madurese were forced to leave the neighboring province of West Kalimantan. Then the mangok merah or "red cup of war" was circulated among Borneo's indigenous tribes, and hundreds of Madurese perished while local Javanese, Balinese and other inner island Indonesian migrants were left almost unscathed. Now the same pattern is repeating itself.
What has gone wrong with
Indonesia? Has inter-ethnic conflict now reached such a peak that the very
integrity of the unitary republic is at risk? Bhinneka tunggal ika or "unity
in diversity" is the reassuring motto of the Indonesian state, a motto
in part inspired by the United States's e pluribus unum. Indonesia's founding
fathers hoped the vast archipelago might one day, like North America, become
a congenial "melting pot" of cultures in which wider Indonesian identity
would replace older ethnic and racial atavisms. Since Suharto's fall in
May 1998, however, quite the opposite seems to have happened. Long simmering
secessionist movements have burst forth with renewed vigor in Aceh and
West Papua, resource-rich outer-island provinces have demanded and are
now receiving - at least at the district level - greater autonomy, and
violence has fractured ancient local communities along religious and ethnic
lines. During the past two years, some three million Indonesians have become
internally displaced within their own country, 400,000 of those in the
Malukus alone. Some even speak of the republic going the way of the former
Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. But appearances are deceptive.
Recent events in Kalimantan give the lie to the idea that Indonesia
is simply disintegrating. The
violence in both West and Central Kalimantan has had a specific target
- the Madurese. Other migrant populations have been spared. Indeed, in
the case of the 1997 violence in West Kalimantan, local Chinese and Malay
populations - themselves descendants of migrants, many of whom had arrived
in the Dutch colonial period (1602-1942) - joined with the Dayak to attack
the Madurese.
This closing of ranks within the local community is understandable given
the abrasiveness of the
Madurese and the coercive nature of the transmigration policies pursued
by Jakarta since the late
1950s. During the New Order period alone some three million inner islanders
were moved under
World Bank-funded programs from Java, Bali and Madura to the ostensibly
"under-populated"
outer islands. Many more followed them as "spontaneous" transmigrants,
attracted by the prospect
of cheap land and commercial opportunities. Of these, some 300,000
Madurese were resettled in
Kalimantan, whose total population was only 10 million in the mid-1990s.
While the overt rationale for transmigration was relief of population pressure on over-crowded inner Indonesia, there was also another, less publicly stated goal. The government saw the transmission of inner island agricultural techniques, especially wet-rice cultivation, as a means of imposing "civilizing" economic development and national integration on the "backward" swidden (slash-and-burn) cultivators of such provinces as Central Kalimantan. Ambitious land reclamation schemes were set in motion and sizeable areas of sawah (wet ricefields) were carved out of primary jungle along the great river systems of the Kalimantan interior. At its peak in the mid-1980s, transmigration consumed 6% of Indonesia's total national budget, with the cost of moving a single family in excess of $7,000. The program was only officially ended in August 2000. Poor planning (especially the lack of environmental impact surveys), degradation of local resources and disputes over land ownership all marred the implementation of the transmigration program. But the most serious problems involved inter-ethnic conflicts. Here cultural attitudes were the key.
Even in the most contested areas, such as Indonesian-occupied East Timor (1975-99), the arrival of officially sponsored transmigrants did not necessarily spell disaster. The 700 Balinese families who were brought into the fertile rice-growing Maliana plain near the border with Indonesian West Timor, for example, apparently built up good relations with the local Timorese community and some even inter-married. Had it not been for the Indonesian military's scorched-earth policies in the aftermath of the Aug. 30, 1999 independence vote and the forced evacuation of all Indonesian nationals, many Balinese might have elected to stay in Maliana and become citizens of the soon-to-be independent state. Admired for their agricultural skills and their cultural adaptability, there is no reason why they should not have found an honored home as citizens of the new Republic of Timor Loro Sae. The Madurese, however, are a different story. Hailing from one of the poorest parts of inner island Indonesia, an island renowned in the Dutch colonial period for only two products - salt and soldiers - the Madurese brought with them their own village-based martial traditions (epitomized by the grass-cutting sickles stuck in their waistbands) and an unflinching style of Islam. This sat ill with the animist belief systems of the local Dayak majority, who are renowned throughout Indonesia for their knowledge of the black arts and their own head-hunting traditions.
The fact that the Madurese were competing with the Dayak for scarce economic resources in the poorest of the three provinces of Kalimantan made them difficult neighbors. Indeed, once the weight of the New Order's security state apparatus had begun to decline with the onset of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Jakarta's ability to contain these seething resentments of outer island populations against unassimilated transmigrant communities was put to the test. Nowhere has this been more serious than in Kalimantan. The slowness of the government's response to the current crisis is a measure of the sheer scale of the problems now confronting Indonesia. With a third of its navy blockading the Malukus, new security problems arising daily in Aceh and West Papua, and the crisis over President Abdurrahman Wahid's leadership causing unrest in Java itself there is precious little spare capacity available to contain the violence in Kalimantan. Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri's hurried visit to Central Kalimantan last week may underscore the government's concern, but unless it is followed by concrete action the crisis will not be resolved. First, Jakarta must realize that in the specific case of the Madurese in Kalimantan, transmigration has not worked. Sufficient security forces must be deployed to guarantee the safe and orderly return of those remaining Madurese who are seeking repatriation to inner-island Indonesia.
Second, immediate meetings must be sought with local community and adat, (customary) leaders, to find new ways to improve inter-communal relations. Such meetings have in the southern and southeastern Malukus have resulted in a decline in violence and in previously displaced populations being allowed to return to their old homes. Something similar must be attempted in Central Kalimantan. Third, every effort must be made in the current devolution process to make sure resources are divided fairly among local communities. The province of East Kalimantan has shown the way forward here by announcing that it intends to make all junior and senior high school education free for local inhabitants once it starts receiving expected royalties from foreign oil and gas, and mining companies. Central Kalimantan may not have such assets at its disposal, but the combination of timber, agriculture and tourism could generate sufficient income to ensure better social welfare facilities and economic opportunities for all its people.
Now is the time for statesmanship - not the knee-jerk, security-state
responses of the New Order. If she wishes to preserve her father's legacy,
Megawati Sukarnoputri will need to act with skill and
imagination. What better place to start than in Central Kalimantan?
