Indonesia said yesterday it would send extra troops into Borneo where it fears the spread of brutal ethnic violence, which has already killed up to 400 people.
Chief security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Jakarta would support a state of civil emergency in the bloodied central Kalimantan province if local officials deem it necessary.
PHOTO: AP
"The central government has asked the local government to assess the situation over the next three days, if they see a need for a civil emergency, certainly the central government would back it up," Yudhoyono told a news conference late yesterday.
It is some of the most savage bloodshed to hit Indonesia, a giant archipelago straddling the equator which has been racked by violence over the past three years of political upheaval and economic collapse.
Many legislators, including influential parliament speaker Akbar Tandjung, have urged the government to declare a civil emergency in the province.
"If the situation in the region has turned into chaos, it is necessary for the government to consider imposing a state of civil emergency," the official Antara news agency quoted Tandjung as saying.
Civil emergency is a step down from martial law and the measure allows security forces to search houses, detain suspects and impose a curfew.
One report said that notorious special forces could be sent in to help end the killings, which erupted over a week ago when indigenous Dayaks, and once feared headhunters, began attacking immigrants from the island of Madura.
Rampaging Dayaks, whom security forces have done little to stop, have forced some 30,000 mainly Madurese to flee Sampit town in central Kalimantan, the scene of most of the unrest. Thousands of refugees, bringing a few belongings and grim stories, have fled south by ship to the city of Surabaya in Java and just across from their homeland, Madura island.
"In the middle of the road, the mobs stopped our car. They dragged out one passenger and cut off his head. Then they cut off three more heads," said Tarmi, one of the refugees. "Three of my kids were crying of fright. We thought we were next but they left us alone. They said `Do not be afraid, you're not Madurese. We know how Madurese smell," she said in Surabaya. Tarmi is from east Java.
By yesterday evening an estimated 10,000 Madurese remained in Sampit, 750km northeast of Jakarta. Officials were planning to evacuate them this week.
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