BORNEO: ETHNIC VIOLENCE LATEST

(25 Feb 2001) English/Nat
XFA
Armed Dayaks set up and manned roadblocks in the Central Kalimantan province of Palangkaraya for the first time on Sunday, raising fears that ethnic violence sweeping the region may spread further.

Dayak mobs in the town torched houses belonging to immigrants from Madura Island.

Police said they were on full alert in the city, about 208 kilometers (130 miles) away from Sampit.

However some Dayaks were forced to evacuate their own possessions as fires threatened to spread to their houses.

In the first official response to the weeklong intercommunal conflict, Indonesia's top security minister Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono toured the area.

Speaking as he prepared to board a flight to Sampit, where thousands of people have fled the ethnic slaughter, Yudhoyono said he was assessing the situation on all fronts to determine what the Indonesian government could do to end the violence.

Over the past 40 years, tens of thousands of people, mostly Madurese, have resettled to Borneo in central Kalimantan province.

The government transmigration program that brought them there was designed to relieve overcrowding in other areas, but it has sparked resentment among the indigenous Dayak.

The violence is the latest in a series of bloody outbreaks of ethnic fighting in Kalimantan.

In the past several years, hundreds have died in clashes in the area, most sparked by land disputes between Dayaks and Madurese.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We will check on the support, the refugee situation, the security situation and all aspects."
SUPER CAPTION: Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesian Security Minister

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