A letter from Glodok, Jakarta

A letter from Glodok, Jakarta
JP/6/E00

A letter from Glodok, Jakarta

Kavi Chongkittavorn
The Nation
Asia News Network
Bangkok

Satu musuh -- sudah kebanyakan, seribu kawan -- masih
kekurangan, is the motto of Eddy Sadeli. He translates the
expression as "one enemy is too many, one thousand friends are
too few". Sadeli, who is Chinese, has a greater interest in
making friends than enemies, especially among the pribumi, or
indigenous Indonesians. After all, he is taking part in the
legislative election scheduled for April 5.

Sadeli, who is running under the new Democratic Party (Partai
Demokrat) of General (ret) Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the former
security minister under President Megawati Soekarnoputri,
admitted that though Chinese Indonesians see themselves as "real"
Indonesians, many Indonesians do not share this view.

A reflection of this sentiment among ethnic Chinese
Indonesians is the increase in the number of Chinese candidates
-- about 172, all told -- contesting in the elections for the
House of Representatives and Regional Representatives Council.

As one of the Tionghoa, as ethnic Chinese are called locally,
competing in the race, Sadeli, or Lee as he is known among fellow
Chinese, must tread a very thin line because he does not want to
turn away ethnic Indonesian voters.

Sadeli said there are approximately 12 million Indonesian
Chinese, representing about 5 percent of the country's 220
million-strong population, giving Indonesia the largest Chinese
population in the world outside China and Taiwan. He said the
Tionghoa are actually not a minority in Indonesia as they rank
third in terms of size after the Javanese and Sundanese peoples.
He added that for this reason, Chinese people should claim the
rights they should have under the country's constitution.

Sadeli said Chinese people began settling in Indonesia in the
14th century and, in fact, Chinese Muslims first introduced Islam
to the country. The form of Islam they brought was distinctively
of the Oriental tradition, he said.

"That is why Indonesian Muslims are different from Middle
Eastern believers," he said.

Sadeli's assistant Hussein said the government should
reintroduce the Chinese curriculum for teaching Islam and other
secular subjects. His voice was bitter but firm. Hussein, a
Chinese descent from Fujian, said Indonesia would be a better
nation if all people and all ethnic groups were equal.

"After all, the constitution recognizes all religious
beliefs," he added.

However, an historical animosity towards people of Chinese
descent keeps Indonesians from readily accepting them as locals.
He contrasted the situation to that in Thailand, where the
Chinese have assimilated without any problem.

Rebecca Harsono, a young activist, thinks it is time to
address the role of Chinese Indonesians in a holistic manner. As
an executive director of the Institute of Anti-Discrimination in
Indonesia, a non-governmental organization fighting anti-Chinese
discrimination, she has been helping poor Chinese people tend to
legal and official matters.

"The Indonesians talk about rich Tionghoa, but they forget
about the poor Chinese who have the same lot in life," she said.
These people, she added, earn a meager income from fishing,
manual labor and other odd jobs.

Some older Chinese say things have improved since Soeharto's
rule ended in 1998. Chinese culture, rituals and practices are
again being observed after more than three decades of
suppression. Activities that were prohibited in the past, such as
the Lunar New Year (now national holidays) celebration or dragon
and lion dances, are permitted to take place.

So is the display of Chinese characters. Four Chinese dailies
are competing for the attentions of an admittedly limited
readership. Ten years ago in Glodok, everything Chinese was
hidden or camouflaged.

If these phenomena are now out in public, one thing has not
changed -- the most popular Hakka restaurant, Angke, is still
number one in Jakarta. It is jam-packed every day of the week,
every week of the year. But in an atmosphere of burgeoning
democracy, Chinese Indonesians know they cannot be quiet as their
forbears were. Indeed, they are asserting themselves and claiming
their rights. Before that can take place, a change of mind-set is
needed among both indigenous and Chinese Indonesians, Harsono
said.

"Their lives are intertwined and inseparable," she said.

One way to demonstrate confidence in Chinese Indonesians would
be to get rid of the citizenship certificates that are given to
the Chinese at their birth.

Sadeli, Hussein and Harsono agreed that while Indonesian
society in general has become more tolerant of Chinese people,
the derogatory racist term orang cina is still used in certain
quarters.