Security forces fanned out Monday across Indonesia’s blood-soaked Central Kalimantan province, where an indigenous Dayak leader declared victory after a terror campaign to drive an ethnic minority from the region.
“We have won the war, we are now just waiting for the refugees to be evacuated,” said Mohammed Usop, a university professor the Dayak fighters say is their leader.
Nine days after the first settlers from the Indonesian island of Madura were killed–some of them beheaded and their hearts ripped out–303 people have been slaughtered, officials said.
Aid workers say the death toll could reach 1,000 because uncounted bodies still lie in torched houses and fields.
Ships that had been expected to arrive Monday to evacuate many Madurese failed to turn up.
The violence was aimed at “cleansing the Madurese,” Usop said. During the past 40 years, more than 100,000 Madurese have resettled in Kalimantan–the Indonesian part of Borneo island. They were moved in as part of a government program designed to relieve overcrowding in other areas.
Fleeing Madurese have condemned Indonesia’s security forces for failing to protect them.
National Security Minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono announced that a battalion of 600 Indonesian army troops had arrived in Palangkaraya to reinforce the police.
Later in the day, however, police and troops did nothing to stop Dayaks carrying out their destruction in broad daylight before crowds of onlookers.
The clash between the indigenous Dayaks and the immigrant Madurese demonstrates the inability of President Abdurrahman Wahid to halt Indonesia’s slide into anarchy and mob rule.
The government now faces internal warfare in four regions: Borneo, Aceh, Irian Jaya and the Molucca islands.
