Witnesses to Borneo's killings

Police guard survivors of Borneo's ethnic violence

By Richard Galpin in central Kalimantan

On a football pitch in the small town of Parenggean, there is the pungent but unmistakeable odour of blood.

When they kill the Madurese, they say they kill a monkey not people

Eyewitness

Scattered across the muddy playing field lie discarded shoes, photographs, hair grips and even babies' clothes.

Last Sunday night a group of almost 120 people were brought here by the Dayaks and systematically butchered.

Standing on the football pitch a man who had watched the massacre take place described what happened.

"They brought the people here in four trucks," he told me. "When they opened the back of the vehicles they stabbed them with spears."

"Those that were not killed immediately were slashed on the ground with machetes," he continued.

"Many of the men were then decapitated."

No mercy

Later I came across another eyewitness, a woman who has now fled the town.

Some who escaped the killings will bear the scars for life

I asked her if any of the people taken to the field managed to escape.

"Not one of them. All of the people who are already in the four trucks died in the field. No one escaped," she said.

Did they show mercy to women or children or anyone?

"No," she replied. "They were Madurese, so they killed them just then."

The woman recounted seeing bodies with the hearts ripped out, and evidence of cannibalism. She described how the Dayak men who had carried out this slaughter reacted to what they had done.

"When they have killed somebody, they feel happy, because they make a noise like when they go to the forest and hunt some animal.

"They make a noise 'ooh loo loo loo' and when they kill the Madurese, they say they kill a monkey not people."

Survivors

Some people did survive the massacre, such as a heavily pregnant woman who said she had lost all her family in the attack.

Until they can be evacuated, people are being kept in camps

The 118 migrants murdered on the football pitch were part of a larger group who had just come out of hiding in the jungle.

The local Dayak leader in Parenggean had agreed to allow them safe passage out of the province.

They were waiting to be transported in a convoy of trucks. But somehow word got out that hundreds of migrants were there with only a few policemen guarding them.

Soon Dayak fighters arrived from outside, determined to kill as many as possible.

Most of the survivors have now reached the heavily guarded refugee camps in a town 100km away. But here they also face further problems.

Conditions are appalling, with up to 20,000 people crammed into the grounds of local government offices.

Many more are arriving every day after emerging from their hiding places in the jungle.

There are desperate scenes whenever food and water are distributed and there is a total lack of sanitation.

Evacuation 'slow'

People are waiting for boats being organised by the government to transport them away from Kalimantan but the head of the Indonesian Red Cross, Mar'ie Muhammad, says the evacuation programme is not fast enough.

"The evacuation so far to Saba is rather slow, rather slow, frankly speaking. I am rather embarrassed. We are from the Red Cross and our humanitarian effort is embarrassing. It is slow."

International aid agencies are beginning to help as the scale of the crisis becomes clearer. But still the people in the camps are lacking basic facilities and medicines. Much more could be done to assist them.