Hate the legacy of Indonesia's tribal war

It is customary for Dayaks to parade the severed heads of their victims on sticks.

By CNN's Marianne Bray
in Hong Kong

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- In February this year, Dayaks with swords and spears went on a rampage, beheading and mutilating almost 500 Madurese in the Indonesian province of Kalimantan, on Borneo.

The Dayaks, the tribespeople native to the region, accused the migrants from Madura, an island off East Java, of taking their land and their jobs.

The intense hatred led to some of the worst bloodshed seen in Indonesia in recent years with men, women and children hacked to death.

Some were decapitated -- their heads kept and paraded on sticks as trophies -- as is the custom of the Dayak people.

By early April almost the entire Madurese population had fled their homes.

The Dayaks cheered their departure by burning down their houses and shops.

Troops stood by

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In a bid to curb further outbreaks, the International Crisis Group (ICG), a group that seeks to contain conflict, has released a report on the Kalimantan violence.

While the group says there are no easy answers on why the brutal massacre took place, one thing is clear.

Troops did little to curb the conflict.

The killings took place with Indonesian authorities seemingly doing little to arrest the brutal ethnic cleansing of Madurese from Borneo.

For the most part the government sent more troops and police to the region, but failed to stop the violence.

The only substantial role the troops seemed to play was to help escort migrants from their hiding-places in the jungle to refugee camps, and ship thousands of migrants away from Kalimantan altogether.

Punishment

Most Madurese fled their homes after the February violence.

Today close to 50,000 Madurese crowd refugee centers in Kalimantan itself, while up to 100,000 are "back" in Madura, although they have no close ties with the island.

The presence of the refugees is creating a huge strain on an already poor region, aid groups say.

But in moving forward, Indonesia must address the needs of both groups, the ICG says. It must uphold the law, but not at any cost.

Blame each other

This could be difficult. In the aftermath of the clashes, both sides have blamed each other.

The Dayaks view the Madurese as arrogant and exclusive, violent and untrustworthy and have complained of losing land and jobs for years. A Madurese attack in February fuelled the recent clashes, the Dayaks say.

For their part, the Madurese say the Dayaks provoked the small clashes as a pretext for the massacre. They complain of being targeted ever since they were sent to Kalimantan under a now discredited policy of spreading the country's population more evenly.

But "guilty verdicts against Dayaks could provoke more violence," ICG's Asian head Robert Templer warns, adding it is easy to blame the violence solely on ethnicity without considering former president Suharto's legacy of transmigration and massive logging as factors in the Dayak's dislocation.

In the bloody clashes, women and children were not exempt.

"The authorities must strike a delicate balance between delivering justice and turning their attention to genuine Dayak concerns."

Dayak grievances must be addressed. But so must the plight of Madurese refugees, who must be allowed to return home.

And Indonesian police have to boost their presence in their province to curb further clashes, the ICG concludes.