|
Borneo Violence Spreads To Provincial Capital, Death Toll Tops 270
SAMPIT, Indonesia, Feb 25 (News Agencies) - Thousands of desperate refugees fought for space on evacuation ships from this Borneo town Sunday as the official death toll from a week of ethnic bloodshed rose to 270, and the violence spread to the provincial capital and other townships.
"I can see smoke rising here," a policeman in Palangkaraya, the Central Kalimantan provincial capital, 220 kilometers (136 miles) northeast of the devastated river town of Sampit, said.
He said more than 10 homes of Madurese settlers were in flames, torched by Dayak mobs, but that they were empty, abandoned earlier in the week by Madurese fearful that the Sampit violence would spread.
Police spokeswoman Andi Selvy said the burnings raged on late into the night.
In Samuda, 40 kilometers south of Sampit, foreign journalists were told by a village chief that at least 15,000 Madurese had fled fresh killings by sword-wielding Dayak tribesmen there, and were hiding in the jungles.
The journalists saw beheaded corpses on the road on their return journey that had not been there in the morning.
The state Antara news agency, citing its own sources and observations, said the death toll could reach 400.
It said headless, decomposed bodies were scattered in many corners of Sampit.
In Cairo, Indonesian president Abdurrahman signaled that he had asked the country's feared special forces to intervene.
"There is a conflict ... that requires Indonesian Special Forces to be sent," Wahid, who is attending an Islamic summit, was quoted as saying by Egypt's MENA news agency.
"Some people are asking why we are sending special forces to the region, and the answer is that there is an urgent need for us to do that," he said.
Sampit administration chief Mohamed Wahyudi said the official death toll in the violence that erupted last Sunday had risen to 270.
At least 10,000 frantic refugees, hungry and traumatized by a week of beheadings by marauding Dayak tribesmen, were still awaiting evacuation, Wahyudi said.
The Dayaks, armed with swords, arrows and blowguns, are hunting down Madurese, beheading some and burning and looting their houses.
As the violence spread, the first official delegation from Jakarta to visit Sampit - headed by chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and armed forces Admiral Widodo Adisucipto - flew into Sampit by helicopter.
Yudhoyono called it a "human tragedy."
Earlier some 4,000 refugees packed into a passenger ship at Sampit river dock for Java island, and another 4,000 left on two navy landing craft overnight.
Qamaruddin Sukhami, a doctor at the general hospital in Sampit, said that 60 of 175 bodies piled in the grounds and the morgue of the Murjani hospital were due to be buried in a mass grave later in the afternoon.
Police were patrolling the streets Sunday, for the first time seizing arms from Dayak gangs.
A local priest said the Dayaks were determined to drive the Madurese out.
"I traveled around the city yesterday and they told me they would not go home until all Madurese have left," Father Willy Bald Kfaoffer of the Saint Yohannes Don Bosco church said.
In December at least four people died in fighting between Dayaks and settlers from Madura island in Central Kalimantan, while 11 people were killed in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak in similar clashes in October.
Violent attacks on Madurese by Malays, backed by Dayak tribesmen, in West Kalimantan in 1999, left some 3,000 people dead and tens of thousands of migrants displaced.
Borneo island is divided between Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei.
In Malaysia Sunday, a top security official said police there were ready to turn back anyone trying to escape ethnic bloodshed in Kalimantan.
"We have obtained information from Indonesian authorities that thousands of Indonesians are waiting for the right time to enter Malaysia," Muhamad Muda, marine police chief said.
|
