Dayak Politics in Anti-Chinese Demonstration of 1967, West Kalimantan, Indonesia

Abstract

This paper analyzes the process and outcome of the anti-Chinese Dayak Demonstration (Demonstrasi Dayak) of 1967 in West Kalimantan, taking into account Dayak politics and their social circumstances.

Since the early 1960s, the Chinese communist guerillas from Sarawak who resisted the formation of the Federation of Malaysia had been also active in West Kalimantan. President Sukarno supported them in the context of his confrontation policy against Malaysia. However, after the September 30th Incident of 1965, Suharto’s anti-communist army intended to destroy them by pushing all the Chinese communities from the hinterland into larger cities near the coast. The army provoked the indigenous Dayak people to carry out these violent evictions.

Chinese in West Kalimantan had lived harmoniously with Dayak people from the middle of the18th century, but in their daily lives, Dayak people were aware of the economic inequality between themselves and the Chinese, and were often frustrated by this inequality biased against them. Moreover, a competition between two Dayak leaders, Oevaang Oeray and Palaoensoeka in the 1960s, saw Oeray lose influence on Dayak society after the 1965 Incident, since he had led the leftist party, Partindo. However, he still harbored a desire to regain political power and establish territories where Dayak people had privileges over Chinese. Thus, he cooperated with the Indonesian army in the Dayak Demonstration.

At first, the provocation of the Indonesian army brought no reaction from Dayaks. But, in October 1967, Oeray issued a “declaration of war” against the Chinese. The red bowl (mangkok merah), a signal of preparing for war, was circulated in the Dayak villages. Dayaks subsequently started to drive the Chinese away, quickly and drastically.

After this incident, however, in the absence of Chinese traders, the economic conditions declined in the hinterland, and Dayaks themselves suffered from the lack of food and other basic necessities.

In the national context, this incident marked the completion of the establishment of Indonesian state authority through military occupation in West Kalimantan, which earlier had enjoyed independent order.

Finally, this paper emphasizes the continuity of violence in the Dayak society. After the expulsion of the Chinese, the same pattern of protests had been on the rise against the Madurese, until the culmination of the Dayak-Madurese conflict in the latter half of the 1990s.