'Gong Xi Fa Cai'

'Gong Xi Fa Cai'

For the first time, the Chinese New Year in Indonesia has been
declared a national holiday by the government.

This is a long-awaited recognition of not only the presence of
the largest minority ethnic group in this country, but also of
its contributions to the nation, and to the process of nation
building over the years.

Recognition it may be, but it is only a token gesture.

Chinese-Indonesians still face discrimination because of the
color of their skin. We hope the government will follow up this
recognition by revoking all remaining laws, decrees and
regulations that smack of racial discrimination.

There are no official statistics on the size of the ethnic
Chinese community in Indonesia. Estimates, however, put it at
between six million and 10 million, including intermarriages.

Because they have lived in Indonesia for generations, ethnic
Chinese should have the same rights as others in the nation.
Alas, this has not been the case these last four decades or so.

Making the Chinese New Year a national holiday was probably
the least that the community needed. Even without official
recognition, the Chinese have marked the New Year within the
confines of their private homes all these years. Only recently,
with more openness and tolerance, have we started to see again
the colorful lion and dragon dances being performed in the open.

Under the Soeharto regime, as part of its assimilation policy,
the Chinese were banned not only from celebrating their New Year
openly, but also from making an open display of cultural
expressions. The use of Chinese characters was banned, Chinese
were told to shed their names and adopt "Indonesian" sounding
names, Chinese-language schools were closed down and they were
told to adopt one of the five officially recognized faiths.
Ethnic Chinese were barred from entering the civil service, the
military and politics, and faced restrictions in the
entertainment industry.

Soeharto's assimilation policy gave justification to the
discriminatory policies. This in turn bred the prejudices against
the Chinese among the majority "indigenous" population. These
prejudices, in turn, have been the source of the anti-Chinese
riots that have sporadically taken place in the country.

Reformasi changed some of that, but has not removed the chief
problem: institutionalized racial discrimination.

Then president Abdurrahman Wahid gave the official recognition
of Confucianism as a faith recognized by the state and declared
in 2000 the Chinese New Year a "facultative" holiday, meaning
that those who celebrate it may take the day off. President
Megawati Soekarnoputri this year formalized it into a full-
fledged national holiday.

Many ethnic Chinese also are beginning to appear in the
political scene. One of them has even served in the Cabinet under
both Abdurrahman and Megawati. More Chinese-Indonesians are
starting to enrich the local pop culture.

This limited participation by ethnic Chinese in various walks
of life shows that given the chance, they can make even greater
contributions to society, besides their already well-recognized
achievements in the trade and business sectors, and to a lesser
extent in sports, particularly badminton.

All this is encouraging, because Indonesia is all the better
off with the unrestricted and wider participation of minority
ethnic groups in the nation's life. Racial harmony is best
promoted not through forced assimilation, but by ensuring that
every citizen of whatever race has equal rights in this country.

The development of recent years should be ground enough for
President Megawati to remove, once and for all, every remaining
law and regulation that discriminates against people on the basis
of the color of their skin.

A pledge, with a concrete plan to remove this
institutionalized racial discrimination, would be the best New
Year's present the President could give to the Chinese community.

Gong Xi Fa Cai.