Thousands of armed men are ravaging the villages of western Borneo, burning houses, butchering people and cutting off their heads. At least 165 have died in a week of vicious mob fighting, the latest communal bloodbath to break out in Indonesia.
On a country road, a severed head sits on an oil-drum, displayed proudly by local people. The murdered man is an immigrant from the island of Madura, far to the south. His head has been slashed and a cigarette butt shoved up his nose in a gesture of contempt. Along the road, black smoke is rising from burning houses.
The killers, armed with spears, slings and home-made guns, are a mix of Muslims, Christians and animists from several ethnic groups. They say that the Madurese, who are also Muslim, are thieves and thugs who must be driven out of this Indonesian province of West Kalimantan.
"We won't stop until they have all been cleared out," says one tired and sweaty fighter with a red beret and a bloodstained sword, as he rests by the roadside.
The ethnic Dayaks, the famous head-hunters of Borneo, fought the Madurese two years ago in a war which cost up to 1,000 lives. The ethnic Malays, who did not join that earlier fight, are in this one with a vengeance. So are a few of the ethnic Chinese, themselves often the victims of pogroms in Indonesia. It seems the Madurese are being made the scapegoats for the thuggish behaviour of a few of them, who rob shops, steal land or fight with knives.
The Malays have learned the Dayak habit of cutting off their enemies' heads and eating their livers to take their fighting spirit. A Malay teenager, armed with a spear, beckons over some foreign journalists and unwraps a yellow cloth. Inside is a piece of human liver. "It's from a Madurese," he says, smiling.
Thousands of Madurese have fled to the towns, or to army bases. Some are still trapped in the forests, hunted by the Dayaks and Malays, or awaiting evacuation by ship. The army, discredited by the fall of the repressive former president Suharto from power last May, says it is afraid of the international reaction if it uses force to stop the killing.
"Since the reform began, if we shoot people, there's human rights [to worry about]," says Andi, a young soldier. Another 700 troops were sent to the area on Tuesday to join the 2,000 already there, who have done little to stop the killing.
The problem has been brewing for years. Under Suharto, the government in Java took the resources of other islands and ignored their grievances. Now Suharto has gone, those grievances are bursting to the surface across the archipelago.
At least 200 people have been killed on the island of Ambon, more than 1,000 miles east of Borneo. As Indonesia heads for crucial elections in June, many fear the violence will get worse.