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)