Indonesia: Ethnic Chinese Find New Acceptance

On Wednesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono attended the 'United National Indonesian Imlek (Chinese New Year)' celebrations at the Jakarta Fairground and the event was broadcast live on national TV.

Added fervour came from the fact that many Chinese-Indonesians were celebrating the lunar new year as citizens of Indonesia for the first time. A new citizenship act passed by the House of Representatives last July defined an Indonesian as someone born in the country.

{styleboxjp}This act has allowed many Chinese-Indonesians belonging to families that have been in this country for generations but were ''stateless'', to become full-fledged citizens of the country. Ethnic Chinese now number about 10 million in Indonesia's 210 million population{/styleboxjp}.

During the regime of president Suharto, public displays of Chinese culture were banned. Many Chinese were asked to change their names to Indonesian ones if they wished to be considered for citizenship.

"Suharto's government saw Chinese characters and culture as political. We were not even allowed to make candles,'' Yu Le, a member of the local Dhamma Bakthi Petak Sembilan Buddhist temple told IPS. He preferred to use his Chinese name rather than his Indonesian name of Suherman. ''Around the temple there were always police and military. We could not celebrate Imlek here. People were afraid to come. We had to do it at home, hiding," he added.

Inside the temple an elderly Chinese-Indonesian man, who declined to reveal his name, pointed to the Chinese characters and said: ''This was not allowed to be printed and we could not make these candles during Suharto's time."

The ethnic Chinese minority had celebrated the lunar new year freely in the world's largest Muslim country until the abortive 1965 coup against the Suharto regime which was said to have been encouraged by China's communist government. After that anything red (colour of prosperity for Chinese) or Chinese were seen as a threat to state power.

"I and my Chinese friends shared a good time. We helped each other. However, there was (racial) tension under Suharto. I felt I didn't have any Chinese friends after 1965. We suspected that Chinese people were members of the Indonesia Communist Party (PKI) and they became enemies for Muslim people,'' recalls Mustafa Kamal Ridwan, senior fellow at the Habibie Centre, a local Islamic think tank.

{styleboxjp float=left}The Jakarta municipal government banned Chinese new year celebrations in 1967, when Indonesia and China broke off diplomatic relations. Restrictions covered the use of Chinese language in print and public discourse and public performances of cultural acts such as the lion dance were banned{/styleboxjp}.

Diplomatic relations with China were restored in 1990, but the restrictions remained in force.

In 2001, during the regime of president Abdurrahman Wahid these bans were finally lifted. Wahid was also the chairman of Nahdlatul Ulama, the biggest grassroots Muslim organisation in the country with some 40 million members. His successor Megawati Sukarnoputri went a step further by declaring Imlek a national holiday.

During Imlek this year, national newspapers carried colourful pictures of the celebrations. But, there were also commentaries in 'Jakarta Post', for example, debating the level of integration of ethnic Chinese into Indonesian society.

Journalist and writer Sima Gunawan, who only recently disclosed her Chinese name 'Kho Djoen Siem' in public, argued that few people in Indonesia knew that the world badminton champion Rudy Hartono was ethnic Chinese. Or for that matter the film director Teguh Karya, the physicist Yohanes Surya or pop-star Agnes Monica.

On the other hand, she complained, everyone seemed to know the right ethnicity of Chinese-Indonesians who ''commit serious crimes or do something wrong.''

Suharto's regime saw many of his ethnic Chinese cronies amassing huge fortunes. The fact that the Chinese minority have a grip on the country's economy is cause for much resentment among the pribumis (indigenous Indonesians), even educated ones. Also there is a perception that Chinese "family businesses" favour their own in employment or underpay their pribumi workers.

"If we talk about economic advantage or how they control economic opportunity, they (ethnic Chinese) are better positioned than pribumis," said Marwan Batubara, a member of the Regional Representative Council representing Jakarta province, in an interview with IPS. He argues that there is a perception among pribumis that the Chinese think only about their families, community and business.

"It is time for the Chinese community to open up and mingle with the rest of the people more openly than before, because they already got (official) recognition of what they have,'' he added.

Ridwan believes that events such as this week's national celebration of the Imlek festival shows the government is trying to accommodate the Chinese. "It means there is now a willingness to integrate the Chinese (community) into Indonesia. (But) it doesn't mean they integrate with Islamic culture,'' he notes. "They don't have to be Muslim to be Indonesian. Imlek is not a religious celebration."

Ridwan foresees the formation of a Chinese political party in the near future and he points out that many Chinese children go to local schools since not every Chinese is wealthy in Indonesia. "We have to welcome them and not put any suspicion on them," he argues.

He added that there was better chance of integration between the two communities when they can gather together socially. ''Imlek can be a way to integrate the two societies." (END/IPS/AP/CR/DV/CV/IN/KS/RDR/07)

Source: IPS - Inter Press Service News Agency