It's time for Chinese-Indonesians to wake up

It's time for Chinese-Indonesians to wake up

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

This is the second of two articles suggesting steps which
could be taken by Chinese-Indonesians in the aftermath of the May
riots.

JAKARTA (JP): It escapes many people why President B.J.
Habibie's administration persists in making statements that
antagonize Chinese-Indonesians and belittle their decades of
contribution to national economic development and abominable
victimization in the May riots.

I recently observed continuous indiscriminate stigmatization
of businesspeople and their economic activities as if being an
entrepreneur and getting rich from it were a disgrace and should
be treated with hostility. That is the last thing we want to do
in the light of investors' lack of confidence in our country. We
cannot afford to lose more investment.

The extent to which this development confuses business owners,
especially in the distribution sector, has become the major thorn
in the government's side. It wouldn't be that surprising if many
decided to discontinue their businesses and deposit their money
in the bank instead to benefit from the 60 percent annual
interest rate.

The recent calls by the attorney general and minister of
justice for the death penalty for those caught stockpiling staple
foods has created fear among Chinese distributors with a large
turnover who have been in the business for decades or even
generations.

Some have been frequently visited by police to check if they
have "suspiciously" large rice stocks. The risk of arrest, and
subsequent death can be bewildering for a businessman who is
simply trying to earn a living while alleviating hunger in his
community.

It is a moot point to reiterate how much the Chinese have
benefited from the country and its people, something they
couldn't dream of having back in their ancestral homeland. They
couldn't help being born in Indonesia. They couldn't help being
Chinese. The fact is both the Chinese and pribumi (indigenous
Indonesians) need each other and benefit from each other
symbiotically. One cannot exist without the other.

With this in mind, it is really irrelevant to become engaged
in a "mud-slinging" competition regarding who are the good or the
bad guys when we know that this mess stems from a flawed, inhuman
system perpetuated by one megalomaniac named Soeharto.

Unfortunately, unless fostered by a trustworthy and
respectable government, the vast majority of our ill-educated
people will not be able to grasp this.

To add insult to injury, many of our more privileged and
educated members of society, particularly those who form the
country's political elite, have little interest, or are
completely blinkered, in providing a more balanced, sober
assessment of the racial issue in Indonesia.

Despite much criticism of its recent formation, the Chinese-
Indonesian-owned PARTI (Partai Reformasi Tionghoa Indonesia) is a
symbol of the awakening of political awareness among ethnic
Chinese in Indonesia that is worth supporting.

Even if it is true that this party won't get many votes,
should it be allowed to contest next year's general election, the
symbolism conveys a strong message that Chinese-Indonesians have
had enough of being the nation's pariah, of going 32 years
without political rights. They have had enough sleep, and today
is the time to wake up and fight for their lives.

To win the general election, I believe, was never the
intention of the party founders and very likely they will have to
form a coalition with other parties offering similar platforms in
order to be eligible in the general election, however it is a
powerful statement.

It will at least be a political education for the ethnic
Chinese citizens that there are other ways to fight for and
protect their interests besides money. Those who view PARTI with
skepticism, or even disagreement, out of fear that this movement
will provoke a backlash against the Chinese community, have not
shifted their paradigm away from the decay of the New Order; a
model that the process of reform will relegate to the status of a
political relic in the not-so-distant future.

The process of lending the Chinese "more Indonesian"
identities should become a festering product of the past because
it is this very philosophy that is one of the main sources of
discord and tension between the two groups.

In the early years of independence, when the Chinese naturally
used Chinese names, they were not viewed with contempt. They were
accepted as a "fact of life", not something to be disguised or
swept under the carpet. The "euphemism" of Chinese identity is
basically a declaration of its bastardy. No wonder Indonesian
people perceive them with disgust.

There are Chinese-Indonesians who still subscribe to the old
ways of apolitical thinking, preferring "evolution" instead of
"revolution" in reference to the street demonstrations and any
open opposition to the current government.

They, understandably, have not overcome their old mental
script of being "good, obedient" citizens. But fear, or peaceful
evolution as they would like to call it, is not about accepting
stagnation, wrongdoing and folly. They say, look what happened
after Soeharto resigned. Is the economy getting better? No, it is
getting worse.

This statement is really saddening and in a way a betrayal of
those true reformists who are now either still in jail or buried,
dead in their graves. This shows a lack of intelligence, or
probably integrity and the tendency to consider a few bits and
pieces of a complex puzzle in isolation as opposed to looking at
the big picture.

It's true to say that what is happening to us is very much
structurally, systematically and culturally interrelated and this
has caused a vicious cycle of accumulated causal effects over the
years. Every one of us, either "indigenous" or "nonindigenous",
active perpetrators of injustice, the victims, or only silent
watchers, bears a certain amount, big or small, of responsibility
whether we realize it, want to admit it or not.

This, in fact, has been elegantly stated by noted Moslem
thinker Emha Ainun Nadjib when he, on behalf of his "indigenous"
brethren, apologized for what happened to the Chinese during the
May riots. No self-defense. No justification. No examples of how
rude Chinese shopkeepers are to their indigenous customers. No
ifs and buts, just a sincere apology. It was a very powerful
moral message that unfortunately wasn't appreciated by our
government until much later.

As in any psychiatric therapy, it is mandatory for all parties
involved to be able to openly talk about their wounds in order to
heal them and move forward, forget, forgive, and start afresh.

This will only be achieved when Indonesian people have their
sovereignty returned to them and are empowered to voice their
grievances openly and fearlessly.

When the two "warring" parties stand on an equal platform,
both politically and economically, that is when the Chinese are
given back their political rights and the "indigenous" are
elevated to a more equal economic status with their Chinese
counterparts, a harmonious Indonesia based on true
acknowledgment, appreciation and gratitude of its rich, awesome
diversity will be in sight.

So, what is needed next, in my humble opinion, is the big-
heartedness of the power holders to realize that their power
wasn't accorded to them voluntarily by the people. They should
therefore return it to the people through a fair, democratic
election, the sooner the better.

It's probably utopian but if they really want to reflect a
bit, this, in the long run, is in their own best interests. The
sooner they free themselves from being the target of people's
anguish and frustration, the better.

Chinese-Indonesians should actively participate in the reform
movement, voice their aspirations, be more "political" and be
aggressively involved in electing the leader of the country who
reflects their strong belief in liberty, equality and fraternity.

The writer is a human resources consultant based in Jakarta.