City promises to end bias against Chinese-Indonesians

City promises to end bias against Chinese-Indonesians

JAKARTA (JP): The city administration wants to put an end to
allegedly discriminatory practices in the processing of
identification cards for Chinese-Indonesians, an official said
Wednesday.

Deputy governor for administrative affairs Abdul Kahfi said
the plan was based on universal human rights which stated that
all citizens were equal and had the same rights and obligations.

Kahfi did not put a time frame on when the objective could
become reality.

"In the future, such differential treatment will be considered
to be terminated," he told The Jakarta Post.

Although Kahfi refused comment on the issue, many Chinese-
Indonesians also believe their identification cards are marked
with special codes denoting their foreign ancestry.

"Unlike the ID card number of others, mine has a space on it
which my neighbors said was a code for my status as a person of
Chinese descent," said a female private employee.

But the head of the city office of population affairs,
Soemarto, denied there was coding.

"No. There's no discrimination. There's no special marks.
There might have been in the past, but not anymore," he said.

Soemarto's opinion was shared by Tan Siu Sin, a Chinese-
Indonesian living in South Jakarta.

"There used to be a special code inserted in my ID card number
but it is not found anymore in my new card," said Tan.

But he complained about graft practiced by officials at his
district administration office, who demanded Rp 50,000 from him
to help process his ID card.

The official administration fee is only Rp 1,000 per person.

Tan finally decided to handle all the procedures by himself
and spend Rp 10,000 for the card, which was completed in two
weeks.

To apply for an ID card, mandatory for all city residents,
applicants must bring the family collective data card, expired ID
card and documentation if they just moved from another district.

Tan said Chinese-Indonesians are also required to show a
letter from the local district court proving Indonesian
citizenship, proof of a special Indonesian citizenship card,
called K1, and the naturalization document for those who adopted
Indonesian names.

Kahfi insisted prerequisites to obtain the documents were the
same for all city residents.

"If there really are some differences, I think those are only
to... signify their status," he said.

Senior city councilor Nitra Arsyad from Commission E for
social welfare affairs condemned the alleged discrimination.

"I don't see the necessity of appending special codes on the
ID cards for Chinese-Indonesians.

If the marks were made to help the government in identifying
people for administration or security purposes, then it would be
better to put the marks in documents stored in a data base or
something, not in the ID cards," he said yesterday.

Nitra believed the identification policy was made by the
government years ago in a bid to foil the possibility of illegal
Chinese migrants from obtaining Indonesian ID cards or passports.

Many Chinese reportedly illegally entered the country at that
time through areas including Riau in Sumatra, West Kalimantan and
North Sumatra.

He said the government introduced rigid screening procedures
for ethnic Chinese because it feared they might cause problems.

But erasing discriminatory codes from ID cards would not
tackle public resentment of Chinese-Indonesians, Nitra said.
(cst)