Chinese New Year to be publicly celebrated

Chinese New Year to be publicly celebrated

JAKARTA (JP): Worshipers of Confucianism this year will for
the first time in over three-decades be able to openly celebrate
the Chinese New Year, which the High Council of Khonghucu
Religion announced would fall on Feb. 5.

Budi S. Tanuwibowo, head of the council's commemoration
committee, said here on Saturday that this would be the first
time ethnic Chinese and followers of Confucianism would be able
to celebrate it publicly.

Until recently, all public activities related to Confucianism
and Chinese religious practices and traditions were prohibited
based on Presidential Instruction No. 41/1967.

He said the council would focus on humanitarian and social
activities in Surabaya, East Java, and Jakarta to commemorate the
Chinese New Year.

"We lay a high degree of trust that the new government under
the leadership of President Abdurrahman Wahid will allow
Khonghucu followers the opportunity to celebrate the 2551 New
Year," he said, while adding that he hoped the new government
would eventually annul all discriminative laws.

President Abdurrahman has pledged that his government would
revoke all laws which were ethnically or religiously
discriminative.

The President purposely made China his destination on his
first official state visit overseas to declare that he would not
tolerate racism or other such practices.

Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, along with their faith and
culture, have been sidelined for the last three decades.

The prohibition of Chinese-related traditions stems back to
the 1965 abortive communist coup, which Jakarta accused the
Chinese government of supporting. (mds)