Borneo: Eco Warriors
Duration: 12'45"
Reporter/Camera: Eric Ransdell
Executive Producer: Richard Fabb
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"If you destroy the forest there will be violence, anarchy. Everywhere."
(Murai Garang, Dayak shaman and warlord)
The riots of protesting environmentalists disrupting the business and politics of globalisation in the World's capitals are mild by comparrison to the mass murder in Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. The struggle against globalisation here continues with new conflicts erupting in two of the island's four provinces - adding to a death toll already in excess of 10,000 lives.
These clashes between Borneo's indigenous Dayak people and settlers from nearby Madura Island are not, as has been largely portrayed, a communal conflict. Indonesian Borneo is home to the world's second largest rainforest. For the last 30 years it has been the scene of an environmental apocalypse. Its rainforest, according to recent estimates, will be utterly decimated in less than 10 years and mercury and other toxic wastes from sawmills and gold mines have poisoned most of its rivers.
This Insight News Television film is the first to explain how the conflict is a direct result of the destruction of Borneo's environment. It shows how the once-peaceful Dayak people, whose culture is deeply rooted in the equatorial forests of their homeland, believe that it is nature's anger that has driven them to murder.
Murai Garang is an antiques dealer in the town of Sampit, Central Kalimantan, the scene of the worst violence this year. Mr. Garang is also a Dayak shaman and today he's going through the rituals of preparing his armed warriors for battle. As we see evidence of the massive destruction of the island's rainforest Mr. Garang explains that the Dayaks ancestors live in these forests and that the violence "is a result of people cutting down the trees in our forests."
On the nearby island of Madura, we meet Marayammah a schoolteacher whose husband was decapitated during the Sampit violence. Like most of the 80,000 Madurese evacuated from Sampit, Maryammah hopes one day to return. Back in Borneo Maryammah's house, like most of the houses of the Madurese, has been burnt to the ground.
Down the Kahayan River with Dayak enviromentalist Welly Yessi, she explains, as she passes illegal sawmills and barges overloaded with timber, how the Dayaks' freedom was taken away by the timber companies that divided up their homeland. In the town of Palangkaraya, Suwido Limin, is a university professor, an environmentalist and a local warlord with 1500 men under his command. We meet him at one of many roadblocks Prof. Limin has organized to stop new migrants from resettling his homeland.
Finally, in the overcrowded city of Banjarmassin, where the violence is likely to move next, we meet a Madurese woman who is married to a Dayak man. They believe their love is proof that Dayaks and Madurese can live together. But they are taking no chances. Every night the husband leaves to patrol the neighborhood with other young Dayaks in anticipation of an attack that could come at any time.
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