Chinese still fight for acceptance in Indonesia

Chinese still fight for acceptance in Indonesia

Nopporn Wong-Anan, Reuters, Jakarta

Sulianto Sunarto remembers the days he had to bribe Indonesian officials to sell Chinese red lanterns and lion dance gear in Glodok, Jakarta's Chinatown.

"I felt like a smuggler when I sold those," said Sulianto, who has sold the ornaments for 31 years and only stopped making payoffs to corrupt bureaucrats in 1998 when President Soeharto stepped down after 32 years of iron-fisted rule.

"I felt I was treated unfairly during the Soeharto period," said Sulianto, a 59-year-old Indonesian born of overseas Chinese parents.

And while that particular problem has ended, Sulianto feels ethnic Chinese are still being mistreated by officials in other ways, a view common among his nine million compatriots in the world's fourth-most populous nation of some 210 million people.

Among other difficulties, they still face many discriminatory laws, some dating back to the Dutch colonial period and some passed during the Soeharto period with the primary aim of crushing communist supporters linked to Beijing.

Many Indonesians see the Chinese, who by some estimates control around 80 percent of the nation's wealth, as overly privileged, but defenders say their affluence for the most part simply reflects hard work and an entrepreneurial culture.

Chinese were often targeted in the suppression of communists in 1965 that left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

Political and economic crisis in 1998 saw looting and burning of Chinese-owned shops, raping of Chinese women and more than 1,000 deaths.

Several of the discriminatory laws were repealed after that crisis and Soeharto's fall, but a number remain, as do double standards allowing bureaucrats and others to give ethnic Chinese a harder time than citizens from indigenous groups.

Most ethnic Chinese accept the system as a fact of life, rights activists say. But some young educated ethnic Chinese are campaigning for equal opportunity and gradually gaining support.

"There is progress, but slowly," said Gondomono, a 70-year-old indigenous Indonesian professor of Chinese-Indonesian studies at Jakarta's private Darma Persada University.

"There is still discrimination. That is very obvious, especially at the low levels of government."

Chinese Indonesians generally have to bribe officials to shorten procedures for obtaining citizenship certificates, required under rules imposed only on ethnic Chinese, for their children to apply for all levels of education or passports.

The whole process could cost US$2,500-$5,000 a person, some lawyers estimate.

"They treat the Chinese as third-class citizens," said Frans Hendra Winarta, an outspoken Chinese-Indonesian lawyer and a leader of the Anti-Discrimination Movement or GANDI.

But he and other activists acknowledge an easing of rules and some friendly gestures to Chinese in the post-Soeharto years. Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri has declared the Chinese Lunar New Year a national holiday. Her predecessor, Abdurrahman Wahid, lifted the ban on its celebration and revoked a ban on public displays of Chinese culture.

But GANDI, which receives grants from the Chinese business community and international aid agencies, says the government needs to do more, especially to revoke almost 60 laws activists say discriminate against Chinese directly or indirectly.

GANDI and a small number of parliamentarians of Chinese descent are drafting laws on civil registration and citizenship to replace the antiquated ones.

They hope the bills could be submitted to parliament for consideration by early next year, but some doubt parliament and the government will move quickly.

"This government has been more lenient toward the Chinese, although they still hesitate to repeal all these regulations on the grounds that they are afraid they will be opposed by the Islamic radical parties," Frans said.

While Megawati's ruling PDI-P party was the most sympathetic towards Chinese Indonesians, he did not think the government would repeal all the laws before the 2004 general election.

"We can't push it too much, otherwise she will lose the race and that will be very bad for the Chinese."

Activists also plead for better public understanding and urge the Chinese to assimilate more in society.

"The most effective PR campaign for us is if every individual Chinese wants to contribute to the country: Be a lawyer, a judge, ...not just being involved in business," Frans said.

He wants the public to understand Chinese have contributed much to the country, but realizes this is not an overnight task.

"It might be that you have to fight for generations."