Chinese should be active in political life: Arief

Sri Wahyuni, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Government critic Arief Budiman has said that it is time now for Indonesians of Chinese descent to become political activists or figures who have the guts to criticize national leaders, even though they may risk being sent to prison.

"Doing so will enable Chinese Indonesians to consider themselves as Indonesians who have the same rights and bear the same risks as other Indonesians throughout the country," Arief, who is also of Chinese descent and currently a lecturer at Melbourne University, Australia, said on Sunday.

Speaking in a monthly discussion titled Reconstructing the Social Relations between the Minority and Majority Dichotomy in Indonesia held by the Brotherhood Forum of Faith Society (FPUB), Arief said that Chinese Indonesians had long been perceived as a business-minded community.

"They have been perceived as people who are reluctant to be involved in political activities and are involved only with business activities," Arief said, adding that such a stereotype was a result of the devide et impera (divide and rule) policy applied by the Dutch colonial government, which was continued by Soeharto's New Order regime.

This policy was needed to create a new business class, in this case a Chinese one, he said, to prevent the Javanese from acquiring economic authority, as the Javanese already had political power because Javanese kingdoms at that time were the centers of political authority, which could not be easily be penetrated by the Dutch colonists.

That's why the Dutch needed to stop them from accumulating economic power, he said.

For a similar reason, the New Order government did the same thing. On one hand, it needed a bourgeois community that possessed capital, while on the other, it had to prevent this particular community from acquiring political power.

"That's why an anti-Chinese move was created about every 10 years, to make the Chinese community here feel that they would always need protection from the government," Arief said in front of some 100 people, of whom some 70 were of Chinese descent.

"In other words the (New Order) government showed two different faces in dealing with issues regarding Chinese descendants. On the one hand it 'provided protection' to them, but on the other it provoked anti-Chinese sentiment," Arief added.

According to Arief, discrimination against the Chinese occurred in almost every aspect of life, including education. Gadjah Mada University (Yogyakarta), the Bandung Institute of Technology, and even the University of Indonesia (Jakarta), he said, applied a sort of quota for students of Chinese descent.

Yet, Arief also said that there had been a good sign regarding the issue of the Chinese community in Indonesia, especially after the reform movement, which began a few years ago.

"It was a relief knowing that Kwik Kian Gie was actively involved in a political party and nothing untoward happened to him," he said.