(21 Mar 1999) Natural Sound
Hundreds of euphoric Dayak and Malay warriors, some wearing shirts stained with victims' blood, pillaged and burned abandoned Madurese homes in the Indonesian part of Borneo island on Sunday, after ethnic clashes in which at least 73 people were killed.
More than 15-thousand Madurese have already fled in cars and boats or were evacuated in military trucks, so there are few potential victims around.
Intent on extermination, the gangs were hunting for any pockets of survivors who did not have time to get away.
In similar bloodletting in late 1996 and early 1997, Dayak men assaulted Madurese communities, and soldiers trying to halt the fighting fired on mobs in some instances.
Human rights groups say up to 500 people died.
Ritual savagery has consumed a coastal region of Indonesia near the Malaysian border since armed gangs of ethnic Malay, Dayak and Bugis men set upon immigrants from the island of Madura last week.
A chunk of flesh dangled by a string from the spear of one fighter, who said it was the heart of a man he killed. A few men carried ears and pieces of scalp.
Old customs of tribal war that were thriving when British and Dutch colonists ventured into the Borneo interior centuries ago have been played out in gruesome shows of public rejoicing.
At street intersections, cheering crowds have assembled to view the heads of Madurese men that were sliced off. Their killers say they have cut open the bodies of some and eaten their hearts.
On the outskirts of Sambas, a village army of raucous young men paraded down a road with a wide assortment of weapons - spears, sickles, pitchforks, curved daggers, sharpened bamboo staves, swords with serrated blades and catapults with arrows.
Some carried pistols and homemade rifles.
Gunshots boomed as Malay and Dayak men battered down doors of empty Madurese homes with heavy wooden planks and splashed gasoline inside. Plumes of smoke gushed from flaming houses.
The military has confirmed 73 people dead, but some news reports put the toll as high as 96.
Even though many Madurese moved to Borneo decades ago or were born on the island, they have been subjected to suspicion and periodic attacks by the indigenous people.
The conflict is as much about racial prejudice as disputes over jobs or land.
For the most part, the military has stayed clear of the conflict.
In other parts of Indonesia, the outnumbered military has often appeared unsure of how to handle frequent riots that have persisted since civil unrest ousted former President
Suharto in May 1998.
At times, troops let street violence run its course. On other occasions, they react quickly with lethal force.
The authoritarian Suharto was largely successful in keeping a lid on the social tensions that have always lingered in Indonesia, which has 210 (m) million people and more than 13-thousand islands.
But his tight controls have unravelled as Indonesia moves toward democracy.
Over the past week, the military has set up a couple of roadblocks, but its presence is scarce. Police and soldiers did not intervene as rioters in Sambas systematically
smashed and incinerated home after home.
On a main road, a severed head sat on an oil drum with a cigarette stuffed in its nostril.
Security forces have passed by without stopping. They have let armed men roar through towns on motorcycles and in trucks.
Police pickup trucks have even given lifts to hitchhiking warriors.
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