Word: madura
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...when I left prison on Buru Island, all my papers were taken from me. I was in a group of 40 who were separated from the others. When our ship was north of Madura, my group was taken off the boat. It looked like the authorities were planning to hide us away somewhere. But by chance, someone from the Catholic church in Buru heard we were going to be exiled and he spread the news. So when we were put ashore in the Madura Straits and found a vehicle there ready to take us to Nusakambangan, the notorious prison...
...Later, on the island of Madura, a short ferry ride from Surabaya - where Zheng He would have anchored his boats during his visits - I meet Ma'ruf. At 27, married at 15 to a 13-year-old girl, he still has a boyish face and a loose-limbed manner. He was born and raised on Madura but, unemployed, unmoved by the prospect of spending his life in the tobacco fields, he left for Sampit in Borneo several years ago and found work as a driver. Last February, long simmering tensions between the Madurese and the native Dayaks erupted. The Dayaks...
...Last week, Indonesia's central Kalimantan province reverted to the law of the jungle when indigenous Dayaks, celebrated in tourism brochures for their tribal customs and picturesque, dormitory-style long-houses, went on a coordinated spree of murder against the province's migrant community from the arid island of Madura. And concepts like rule of law began to seem completely irrelevant when the Dayaks, following their traditional custom, began eating the body parts of their victims to gain spiritual strength. More than 500 Madurese were butchered; 30,000 more were shipped from Borneo to Java by military and civilian boats...
...immediate spark to the slaughter can be identified: a murder in Kereng Pangi, a small village near Sampit. A group of Madurese allegedly tortured and then killed a young Dayak in December after a gambling dispute. The murderers, Dayak community leaders say, bribed police and escaped to Madura...
...Economic rivalry is a factor. "The Madurese control all the small businesses, the trishaw drivers, the markets, the porters at the harbor," notes Baharudin, the Sampit official. Many of the Madurese competing for these lower rungs of the economy were recent immigrants, fleeing the poverty of their native Madura, desperate for work. At the site of the largest massacre, Parenggean, the town's main industry was controlled by the Madurese loggers. To make matters worse, a Forestry Department official says, the Madurese had persisted in logging forest that was sacred to the Dayaks. Now the sawmills in the town...