Indonesian Gold (9 page)

As a teenager, Jonathan was moved to the larger port city
of Balikpapan, where he completed high school, curtailing the frequency of his home visits. It
was there that the young Dayak's first glimpse of an aircraft so captivated his imagination he
became determined that, one day, he too would fly. As fate would have it, Indonesia's founding
president, Soekarno, in delivering his country to the communists, signed pacts with Ho Chi Minh,
Mao Tse Tung and the Soviets, resulting in the Indonesian Armed Forces receiving massive military
aid from Moscow. Soviet and Chinese aircraft were added to existing squadrons of American B-25s
and 26s, P-51 Mustangs and Canadian Catalinas and, whilst the world's attention was focused on
what was happening across the short distance to Vietnam, Indonesia suddenly emerged as a most
threatening power.

Jonathan was selected for pilot training. Upon graduation,
he was sent to Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia along with scores of others to learn yet another
language, and undertake conversion training on MiG aircraft.

When he returned to Indonesia, his country already boasted
the third largest communist party in the world and was engaged in war with Malaysia, Singapore
and, secretly, Australia. These were proud times for the Republic's young pilots, the more
fortunate assigned to fly the recently acquired, TU-16 long-range Soviet bombers. Jonathan was
impressed with this huge aircraft, the USSR's equivalent of the American B-52, which his comrades
regularly flew from their airfields in Java, to points provocatively close to British Vulcan
bomber bases in Singapore. Jonathan watched, proudly, as his country's defense forces grew to
threatening proportions, amassing half a million servicemen by the close of 1964, supported by an
array of soviet tanks, missiles, warships and, by the close of that year, several squadrons of
MiG fighters.

At twenty-three, Captain Jonathan Dau was posted to Number
14 Squadron, located at the Kemayoran Air Force Base in Jakarta where he flew MiG21s.
Increasingly disillusioned with President Soekarno's all-embracing, political philosophies, and
his failure to make payments for the arsenal Moscow provided, the Soviets ceased supplying spare
parts. Within six months, even with cannibalizing most of their aircraft inventory, all but four
of AURI's fighter fleet had been grounded, and Jonathan's dream to remain airborne came crashing
down. Across the nation, morale fell to an all-time low. In Borneo, Australian and British SAS
successful deep-penetration operations across the Sarawak-Kalimantan borders, had brought the
Indonesian Army to a standstill. British Vulcan bombers now flew regular missions over AURI bases
threatening to drop atomic warheads on Indonesian cities in the event the Soviet supplied TU-16
bombers reappeared on RAF, Singapore or Darwin-based radar screens.

Bitter with the country's rapidly deteriorating military
position, one of Jonathan's fellow MiG squadron pilots decided that Soekarno should be removed
from the nation's helm. The officer waited for his chance and, when a Palace informant phoned
advising that the President would attend a formal reception that evening, the pilot climbed into
his MiG and went charging into the capital. He flew south and around Kebayoran, along Jalan
Jenderal Sudirman, the jet's engine screaming above the
Selamat Datang
statue outside the
Hotel Indonesia as he tore along Jalan Thamrin, before lining up on Merdeka Barat. With the
Palace directly in his sights, he commenced firing his canons into the well-lit structure, and
continued to do so until exhausting his ammunition. Inside, guests screamed and fell to
highly-polished, marble floors, the MiG's cannons piercing the former Dutch Governor's colonial
offices' solid walls, showering diplomats and other dignitaries with debris and shattered
chandeliers.

Unbeknown to the young officer, the President was not
present when the attack was executed, Soekarno finding humor in the fist-sized holes throughout
the Palace when he finally strutted into the reception, half an hour late, surviving what was to
be the first of six assassination attempts on his charmed life.

The pilot returned to base where word of his transgression
had yet to reach his fellow pilots' ears but, when it did, each in turn was equally devastated by
the news that their comrade had failed. Stigmatized by the assassination attempt, the squadron's
other pilots accepted that their careers would, undoubtedly, take an abrupt turn, and most
resigned their commissions.

The following year, General Suharto successfully effected
his own
coup d'etat
and turned Indonesia upside down. During the bloody aftermath,
Suharto's brutal co-conspirators, Sarwo Eddhie, Ali Murtopo and Amir Machmud specifically
targeted the air force
–
the cleansing process implemented reducing the officer corps by
more than eighty percent. The Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Omar Dhani, was arrested and tried,
his replacement, the thirty-seven year old Rusmin Nuryadin who, the year before, had leaped from
colonel to become the country's youngest four star general, and Minister for Air. With a pro-West
Suharto undertaking to not only rid the country of communism, but to also break off political
ties with the Moscow and Beijing, Jonathan knew that his Soviet training would always be held
against him and so, he too resigned, returning home to his Mahakam village, consumed with
loathing for everything Javanese. The following year he married a girl selected by the elders and
settled down within his own community to reinvent himself, delving once again into the mysteries
of the
Dayak Kaharingan,
spiritualist world. When his father died, the mantel of chief
passed, unopposed, to Jonathan.

Then, the first wave of Javanese trans-migrants arrived,
backed by the might of the Indonesian Army. At first, Dayak communities had welcomed the increase
in trade along the Mahakam River, and the employment opportunities created with the explosion of
logging activity and the introduction of plywood factories. But, the Dayaks soon realized that
they were not to be the final beneficiaries of the enormous wealth generated by Jakarta-sponsored
logging operations, plantations and industrial timber estates. Dismayed, they watched as their
rattan industry was monopolized, and angered to the point of rebellion when their land was
arbitrarily assigned to foreign investors, without compensation. Bulldozers appeared in the most
unlikely areas, stripping virgin forests, the giant
meranti
and ironwood trees hauled away
to meet Java's insatiable demand for construction materials, the cultural, social and
environmental damage devastating in their effect. Where once there were cemeteries and sacred
places, palm oil trees now flourished. Land was stripped and cleared, colonies of Javanese
migrants taking root, their customs, language and religion abhorred by the many Dayak indigenous
groups as a new era of colonialism, through capitalism, started to take shape.

Bloody confrontations, hidden from the International and
domestic Press through severe censorship and well-rehearsed, intimidation tactics, resulted in
the Javanese-dominated military rethinking its strategies in support of transmigration in the
Kalimantan provinces. Department of Defense signaled that Suharto Family interests, and those of
their close associates, were to be protected at all costs. Additional troops were sent to areas
where vested interest groups were in open conflict with the traditional landowners, their orders
to deal swiftly and firmly with the local inhabitants.

Jonathan had witnessed evidence of the brutal
RPKAD's
Special Forces in action. Word had spread through the upper Mahakam reaches that
an isolated village had been razed to the ground by army elements. When he arrived at the scene,
Jonathan no longer harbored any doubts that the Dayak peoples were not only in grave danger of
losing their land and culture to the Javanese, but their lives as well. Amongst the
still-smoldering Longhouse embers he counted more than two hundred bodies, the majority belonging
to children who had obeyed their parents pleas to remain hidden inside, when the soldiers came.
The
RPKAD
Special Forces had surrounded the raised village in crescent formation and
opened fire with their automatic weapons, their bullets easily ripping through the timber-clad
dwellings, killing or wounding all within. Then they torched the dry, wooden structure, the cries
of their victims ignored as thatched roofs ignited spontaneously under intense heat then
imploded, destroying the entire complex within minutes.

****

Throughout the following two decades Jonathan Dau
conducted his own, secret war against the Javanese. He never involved others in his deadly game;
neither did he reveal the real purpose of the frequent excursions that took him away from the
village, often for days at a time. Jonathan was cautiously selective in his targets, killing
soldiers who had strayed or become lost in the jungle. His actions were entirely covert in nature
and, although he enjoyed limited success, the weight of numbers and the constant threat of
discovery, finally convinced him to cease what had become a futile action. Although the
government's repressive actions continued to fuel anti-Javanese sentiment and calls for a
cessation to the transmigration process, the flood continued. Jonathan sadly accepted that the
Dayak people would remain subjects of their new colonial masters, the Javanese, but he still
prayed that the time would come when Borneo would be returned to its original inhabitants, and
the Moslems all sent home.

This was to be Jonathan Dau's impossible dream.

The chief understood that the main impediment towards
building a Dayak nation was that the Kalimantan indigenes had never been unified. Borneo's
indigenous peoples were comprised of scores of tribes, whose varied cultures and dialects had
placed them poles apart, some developing from a highly stratified society with classes of
aristocrats, freemen and slaves, whilst others, such as the northern
Ibans,
enjoyed a more
egalitarian society.

Political lines now divided the great island, with
Malaysia and Brunei to the north, and Indonesian-held Kalimantan to the south. Jonathan accepted
that in order for the
Penehing-Dayak
to survive they would have to be guaranteed their own
land, the question of how to achieve this aim, forever foremost in his mind. His people were but
few in number and, alone, armed but with the most primitive of weapons, the possibility of a
successful military confrontation never entered his mind. A pragmatist, Jonathan believed that
only with great wealth could the
Penehing-Dayaks'
future be secured, his conundrum, the
improbability of such a dream coming to fruition. He had thought of seeking outside help to have
their lands declared part of some world heritage trust, abandoning the idea when he discovered
that this might very well deliver his people even sooner into Jakarta's brutal hands. Then he
embarked on a mission to have the entire area given special status, similar to that of Jogyakarta
and Greater, Metropolitan Jakarta, but without central government support, this too failed. When
the entire island was divided into concession areas covering minerals, oil and gas, Jonathan
accepted that even the great wealth that lay below the surface would never be theirs. Now,
approaching his fiftieth year, Jonathan had not mellowed, the strength of his convictions still
evident in his dealings with government officials – most of whom being Javanese, or their local
lackeys.

When Jonathan was elected village head, out of respect,
none of his fellow villagers had challenged Jonathan's right to lead. Out of bloody-mindedness,
the East Kalimantan Governor had issued instructions for the military to identify pro-Jakarta
candidates from within the local, river communities to run against the powerful spiritualist, but
these efforts failed, causing an embarrassing retreat by the Javanese-appointed
official.

Jonathan Dau continued to dedicate much of his time to the
welfare of the
Penehing
people, counseling, administering cures and complying with the
many, bureaucratic requests that flowed unceasingly from the Governor's office in Samarinda. He
still ventured out into the relatively unknown forests, sometimes spending days alone on the
slopes of
Bukit Batubrok
meditating
,
occasionally climbing the two-thousand-meter
plateau in search of the evasive plants needed for his medicinal potions. On occasion, Jonathan
would take one of the village children with him, teaching the child some of the rudiments of
jungle lore. The Longhouse children competed for this privilege, their parents delighted to
surrender their sons to his care, for their chief had no male heir of his own. And, the
possibility that their child might be the one chosen to succeed Jonathan Dau was not lost on
their number. Jonathan's wife had never fully recovered from her debilitating liver disease,
surrendering to her condition, finally, when their daughter, Angela, was barely three. Jonathan
did not seek another mate – such was his sense of loss. Now, he was to be alone, again.
Jonathan's daughter, Angela, was to leave to attend the Institute of Technology in
Bandung.

As the day for departure neared Jonathan became heavy of
heart, the impending void her absence would undoubtedly create sent him aimlessly into the fields
where village women bent tirelessly, preparing the
ladang
for planting, their pre-school
age children playing in close proximity. There, he had observed a small girl wander off
unnoticed, and had retrieved the child, returning her to a grateful mother before strolling back
through the naturally protected river island, and the Longhouse. It was time to take his
daughter, Angela, up into the mountains.