The Sanggau Ledo riots, also known as the Sanggau Ledo incident, were ethnic riots occurring between December 1996 and February 1997 involving the Dayak and Madurese ethnic groups in West Kalimantan, Indonesia. The conflict started in Sanggau Ledo and eventually spread throughout most of the current Bengkayang Regency and some surrounding areas, with the large majority of the violence targeting the Madurese.
The conflict was sparked from a brawl in December 1996, after which two Dayak men were stabbed in Ledo. Provoked by false rumors that the Dayak men had been killed by the Madurese and that the perpetrators had escaped, Dayak mobs attacked and burned several Madurese settlements in and around Sanggau Ledo. Over the following week, an estimated twenty Madurese people were killed and thousands were displaced.
After a pause in the fighting, the riots were ignited again at the end of January when a Dayak mob killed a Madurese man. Two days later, Madurese mobs killed a Dayak man and severely injured two women. Dayak fighters retaliated with widespread anti-Madurese violence, hunting and slaughtering Madurese civilians, in what many scholars have referred to as an instance of ethnic cleansing.
By the time the conflict subsided in late February, hundreds of Madurese had been killed and almost the entire Madurese population was expelled from the conflict areas, resulting in tens of thousands of refugees. Dozens of Dayak people were also killed, mostly by the Indonesian military. At the time, it was the worst communal violence in Indonesia in decades and the worst conflict between the Dayaks and Madurese to ever occur.
Background
Ethnic groups
The Dayak people are indigenous to West Kalimantan. The Madurese people first began to migrate to West Kalimantan in the 1800s,: "Madurese migration dates from the mid-to-late nineteenth century" although did not begin to arrive in significant numbers until the 1920s.: "The numbers of the Madurese in the province totalled only 631 by 1920. Within ten years, based on the 1930 census, this figure jumped to 5,763 ... At this stage, the Madurese were already the sixth largest ethnic population in the province.": "After 1900, migration to Kalimantan increased. In the 1920s and 1930s, West Kalimantan saw a large influx of Madurese" The initial migrants were mostly brought as indentured laborers,: "Madurese in large part arrived via a system of indentured servitude." often unpaid, in a system anthropologist Muhammad Adib called a "covert slave trade".
After the ethnic cleansing of the Chinese inhabitants by Dayak mobs in 1967, Madurese migration to the area increased, as many began to move into the abandoned lands. Development investment under the New Order government also attracted many Madurese migrants in the following decades.: "West Kalimantan saw a large influx of Madurese when the area was opened up by the Dutch, and this was repeated in the 1970s and 1980s when the New Order regime started to exploit the area's natural resources on an unprecedented scale."
By 1997, Dayaks made up 41 to 43 percent of the population in West Kalimantan, while Madurese made up just 3 to 5.5 percent. The vast majority of Madurese in the conflict areas by this time period were native to West Kalimantan, with a survey by political scientist Jamie Davidson finding 97% had been born there.: "Going to Madura was never considered an option, as some 97% had been born in West Kalimantan."
Previous Dayak-Madurese clashes
The first significant clash between the Dayak and Madurese in West Kalimantan did not occur until late 1967, in the immediate aftermath of the ethnic cleansing of the Chinese. The first conflict started as a fight over properties that the former Chinese inhabitants were forced to abandon. The Madurese were also accused of defending the Chinese and were slurred as "black Chinese".: "[Madurese] began to occupy the now empty [Chinese] land ... This was the source of the first serious riot between Dayaks and Madurese ... On December 7, 1967, Madurese homes ... were burned and fliers circulated describing the Madurese as tjina hitam (black Chinese) and pelindung Tjina (defenders of the Chinese)" Several more Dayak-Madurese clashes occurred in the following decades, although reliable information on them is lacking.: "The number of riots is unclear, especially those that took place in the 1970s and 1980s for which little documentation exists." The worst clashes occurred in 1979 and 1983. None of the previous conflicts likely surpassed 20 to 30 deaths, although some estimates are higher.
While the scale of violence was much smaller than during the Sanggau Ledo riots,: "The intensity and scale of the 1997 violence in West Kalimantan was by far the greatest among a series of anti-Madurese riots that date from 1967 ... Estimated death tolls, ranging from 500 to 1700 with Madurese accounting for the lion's share of fatalities, exceeded figures for previous anti-Madurese riots combined." the previous clashes did have a large negative effect on Madurese and Dayak relations. Compilation lists and stories of the previous clashes spread person-to-person among the Dayaks, with the Madurese being blamed for all of them. Dayaks widely believed that these incidents were never properly resolved.
Prelude
The initial event began in the town of Ledo on 6 December 1996, at a campaign concert organized by the ruling party, Golkar, for the May 1997 Indonesian legislative election. Two youths began interacting with a Dayak girl. The exact nature of the interaction is disputed, with Dayak accounts claiming she was being harassed or, in one story, abducted, while Madurese accounts say there was nothing untoward.: "According to a Dayak eye-witness ... two young men ... harassed or tried to kidnap a local girl ... [a] Madurese source claims that the encounter between the Dayak girl and the Madurese men did not involve anything involuntary on the girl's part ... according to the local community, [she] had been harassed ..." Most accounts say that the youths were bothering the girl. A Dayak man intervened, telling the youths to leave her alone, but they ignored him. The Dayak man then hit them, resulting in a brawl and the youths being beaten.
The beaten youths returned several times with their friends, looking for the Dayak men who assaulted them.: "[T]hey returned with a number of Madurese friends several times, looking for the [Dayak men]." On the night of 29 to 30 December, they found the Dayak men at another concert in Ledo district and one of the youths attacked them with a celurit, a sickle-shaped knife commonly used by the Madurese. The Dayaks fled to a nearby clinic. The injuries were mild, and they were released from the clinic that evening. Nevertheless, rumors quickly spread that the two Dayaks had been killed.
Although widely believed to be Madurese, the youth who stabbed the two Dayaks was half Dayak and half Madurese.: "[T]he primary assailant, Bakrie, was of mixed parentage. His mother is a Dayak." However, he lived in a Madurese area and reportedly identified more with his Madurese side.: "Another thing that the witnesses do not remember or tell was the fact that the main perpetrator of the stabbing is half-Dayak ... his mother is Dayak, even though he himself identifies after his father as Madurese" A Kompas journalist's investigation suggested some of the other youths with him were not Madurese either.
Events
First stage
On the morning of 30 December 1996, a crowd of Dayaks numbering over 100 people assembled at the police station in Ledo.: "Early the next morning an angry crowd of Dayaks gathered at the local police station" Believing the rumor that the Dayaks who were stabbed had died, they demanded that the "killers" be punished. They gave the police a noon deadline to make the arrests,: "Crowds began to gather and the police were given until noon to arrest the assailants." threatening violent retribution if the police did not heed their demands. The police did not tell the mob that they had already arrested the suspects that morning out of fear that the police station would be attacked and the suspects would be lynched. Madurese leaders also made public apologies to the victims, but this did not calm the crowd.
Believing one of the perpetrators of the stabbings lived in Sanggau Ledo, the crowd began a 20-kilometer walk to the town. The Sanggau Ledo police were warned of their approach and began to evacuate the Madurese to a nearby air force base. The mob had about 400 people when they arrived, and more continued to trickle in. They demanded to see the Madurese leaders in the area, but the police refused their demand, fearing for the safety of the leaders. The mob became more agitated and began calling for the expulsion of the Madurese from the area. Later that day, the mob attacked and burned Madurese settlements around Sanggau Ledo.: "Rioters started burning down the homes of Madurese who lived in well-known communities near Sanggau Ledo." One Madurese person was injured in the attack.
The size of the mob was estimated at around 2,000 people by the next morning.: "By the morning of December 31, a crowd of some two thousand strong began burning Madurese homes in Sanggau Ledo." Most of the remaining Madurese houses in Sanggau Ledo were burned, with the Madurese who refused to evacuate earlier fleeing into the jungle. The same day, a Dayak mob attacked a village in Bengkayang district. The Madurese fled to a military compound, and the mob pursued, leading to the military firing warning shots at the ground, with a few members of the mob getting injured as a result. A rumor spread that several had been killed, leading to angry mobs attacking several other villages.
The violence continued for several days, with the size of the Dayak mobs eventually reaching around 5,000 people. Some Madurese retaliated by burning Dayak houses in Pontianak and Singkawang, where Dayaks were a minority, leading to hundreds of Dayaks fleeing. At least two houses were burned and one Dayak person was injured in the attack in Singkawang. Some Malay homes were also burned by the Dayak mobs in Tujuh Belas. The large majority of the violence was targeted at the Madurese.: "Madurese youths also organized their mobs for violence against the Dayaks, but very soon an asymmetry was reflected in the pattern of violence, which after the first days of January was mainly by the Dayak mobs against any Madurese who had not managed to escape from Bengkayang."
The violence mostly ended on 6 January, when there were no more Madurese homes to burn in the main conflict areas. Around 6,000 Madurese were displaced, with most fleeing to Singkawang. Over 1,000 homes were burned. The official death toll was 5, with 21 missing, but unofficial estimates were much higher. A delegation of Islamic scholars counted 18 dead, while other estimates were as high as 50. Most scholars put the number around 20, with all of the victims being Madurese.: "The death toll stood at about 20, all Madurese.": "[T]he rioters ... killed roughly twenty Madurese. Reportedly, Dayaks had suffered no casualties."
Pause in the fighting
A few days after the fighting mostly ceased, a peace agreement was signed between Madurese and Dayak leaders. Peace ceremonies were held from 5 January to 8 January. Leaflets were also dropped by military aircraft in the conflict areas saying that everything was "under control". Many Madurese began to return to their villages, although some who returned said that their homes were still being burned and that Madurese civilians were still being hunted.