Word: wahid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...week after the massacres broke out to restore order, but Madurese houses continued to go up in flames long after their arrival. "That's not our job," was the bored comment from a soldier watching a house being torched in the regional capital Palangkaraya. The government of President Abdurrahman Wahid was characteristically supine. Wahid himself went on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca three days after the killing began and has yet to return...
...Wahid's Indonesia, however, that's par for the course. There are bigger, more troubling imponderables. The country seems to be falling apart in so many different ways. Was Kalimantan's carnage an anti-migrant pogrom similar to those in Irian Jaya? Or was it more like the separatist-incited violence in Aceh? Or was it similar to the bloody religious rivalry between Christians and Muslims in Ambon? When the Dayaks carved out the hearts and heads of their victims, was this the kind of tribal blood sport that would have proliferated in Indonesia had former President Suharto not exerted...
...There is a rivalry between the police and army, a divide deepened when the two were formally split by President Wahid last year. Last Tuesday in Sampit, in the midst of communal slaughter, the army and the mobile police renewed their internecine rivalry. Exactly how the shooting began remains unclear, but after a six-hour, armed standoff, two people had died and 10 were wounded, including the directorate head of Sampit's police, who was shot twice in the back and is still in critical condition. One of those killed was a Madurese refugee. So much for help from Jakarta...
...That attitude is producing a backlash at home. Students, enraged by Wahid's absence during the slaughter of the Madurese, have called for him to fly straight back from Saudi Arabia to Kalimantan. Otherwise, they've taunted, don't come back at all. Vice President Megawati Sukarnoputri made a conspicuous visit to the site of the massacres at Sampit...
...Losers WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Busted! Pipes found in the Bard's home reveal traces of cocaine. Doobie, or not doobie? ALAIN DUCASSE We thought the tuna melt was fine. Michelin guide dethrones French gastronomic king ABDURRAHMAN WAHID Indonesian Prez goes on pilgrimage while Borneo burns. Too tragic for a quip Verbatim...