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)