A foreign Catholic priest in another village described seeing his parishioners return carrying heads as trophies

A foreign Catholic priest in another village described seeing his parishioners return carrying heads as trophies. Local Catholic priests in Dayak villages estimate that 200 Dayaks and 4,000 Madurese were killed in the fighting. The Institute of Dayakology Research and Development, a non-governmental organisation in the West Kalimantan capital of Pontianak, puts the numbers of dead at 1700 The government acknowledges fewer than 300 dead. An estimated 20,000 Madurese are still living in dormitories guarded by the military..

Malcolm Hartley, the magistrate whose decision to send a 12-year- old girl to an adult prison was condemned as “barbaric” expressed regret yesterday, but claimed he had no other choice. In thick jungle near the town of Salatiga last week, The Independent was shown a few of the victims of these attacks: six skeletons, five of them in a single spot, all of them lacking skulls.Photographs taken by a local man on 7 February show severed heads lying in ditches, and a headless, mutilated body by the side of the road in Pahauman. Most of those who died were settlers from the island of Madura, east of the main Indonesian population centre, Java.For decades, land disputes and cultural differences have caused simmering tension between the Madurese and the original inhabitants of Borneo, a race known as the Dayaks. At the very end of last year it exploded, after two Dayak men were stabbed at a pop concert, allegedly by Madurese youths.

The authorities restored an uneasy peace, but when rumours began to spread of similar attacks a month later, thousands of Dayaks, urged on by tribal shamans, began a series of mob attacks on Madurese settlements.The road between Pontianak and the town of Pahauman, two and a half hours’ drive to the north-east, is still lined with hundreds of burned out houses formerly occupied by Madurese. The mother of an Etonian sixth-former in a millionaire family receives pounds 1,500 over three years.”Mr Blunkett was wary about scrapping part of child benefit, which goes to around 12.5 million children and nearly seven million families, but is fully behind the moves to offer children allowances to stay on in some form of education or training.As part of preparing children for work, Education ministers this week will tell schools to pay more attention to literacy and numeracy. The welfare-to-work plans will be financed largely by the pounds 5bn windfall profits tax on the privatised utilities.Scrapping child benefit for 16- to 18-year-olds could release an estimated pounds 600m to pay for education allowances for children from poorer families to continue with their education beyond the existing school leaving age.The welfare to education review, produced last September by Mr Brown with Harriet Harman, now the Social Security Secretary, and David Blunkett, the Employment and Education Secretary, said: “The current system of child benefit after 16 does not work It is not universal and never has been .. The mother of an unemployed 16-year-old loses it. “There is a commitment and it is incorrect to say it has been dropped,” said the source.The Budget is set to follow in the radical, reforming pattern of the first weeks of the Blair administration. Mr Brown, who will today seek to put jobs at the centre of the European agenda at a meeting of European finance ministers, is planning a wide- ranging package of measures to get young people back to work as part of next month’s Budget.
A review of the detailed proposals for the education allowance, including the amount and eligibility, is being carried out by Baroness Blackstone, but senior Cabinet sources said Mr Brown will confirm the plans in principle.There was speculation that the proposals for replacing child benefit had been abandoned, after they appeared to have been watered down to a review in the Labour election manifesto.But sources close to the Chancellor last night denied any change of the policy.

Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, will signal the go ahead for the replacement of child benefit for 16-18 year olds with an educational allowance as part of a radical welfare-to-work strategy to be unveiled in his first Budget. He believes the party has defied its own principles by becoming more centralised and would like to see an independent group at Westminster which would work with the Conservatives as a number of independent centre-right parties work together in Europe.”You cannot have your policies handed down by people who very occasionally come up to shoot in Scotland,” he said.. However, it would be likely to retain strong links with its English counterpart because of its belief in the union. Another crucial decision to be taken at this month’s conference of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association will be its approach to the referendum on a Scottish parliament, due to be held in September.Miss Goldie is chairman of the professional wing of the Scottish Conservatives, the equivalent of the Smith Square headquarters in London. This month’s conference is of its voluntary wing, the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association. Some members argue that the new party should unite these two wings and act as a single organisation with an elected leader.The former foreign secretary, Malcolm Rifkind, has been suggested as a possible leader, but it is believed he still hopes to return to Westminster after losing his Edinburgh Pentlands seat.However, Mr Rifkind said in an article in the Scotsman last week that Conservatives north of the border should reform as a modern unionist party with separate funding and a distinctly Scottish identity.Other Scottish Conservatives have complained bitterly that the party leadership has been out of touch with what was happening north of the border.Arthur Bell, chairman of the Scottish Tory Reform Group, is among them.