Ethnic Violence

This chapter deals with the second type of violent conflict examined in this book: ethnic violence.1 Indonesia witnessed a surge in violent conflict after the sudden economic collapse precipitated by the Asian financial crisis of 1997–98, resulting in the fall of the authoritarian, centralist Suharto regime and the breakdown of the social contract of the ‘New Order’. Although violent internal conflict is not new in the country, serious ethnic violence has been relatively rare, especially during the Suharto administration. The violence reached its peak in 1999–2000 and claimed around 10,000 lives (Varshney et al., 2008). It was the period between the severest economic crisis in the country’s post-independence history, followed by the fall of Suharto in 1998 and the full adoption of decentralization in 2001. It was the peak of transition with all its uncertainties. After a more than four-decade absence the country held its first democratic multi-party elections in mid-1999, and passed two radical laws on decentralization in late 1999, followed by rushed technical preparation for decentralization in the subsequent year (year 2000) before its full implementation on 1 January 2001. Bertrand (2004) calls such situations critical junctures, when several important political shifts take place at the same time and new boundaries are being negotiated.