Moral crisis as serious as economic turmoil
Moral crisis as serious as economic turmoil
By Harkiman Racheman
MEDAN (JP): In a country where absolute power revolves around
a single hand, the ruling regime tends to be corrupt and
unaccommodating (let alone representative!) toward the
aspirations as well as interests of its various social
components.
The now-defunct New Order government was likely to rotate
around the vested interests of a dynasty that prioritized none
but its own members at the expense of others in society. One of
the communities which suffered a great deal from severe political
maltreatment was the Chinese-Indonesians.
The numerous physical and psychological suffering endured by
the Chinese-Indonesians have now surfaced in public discourses.
However, it is regrettable that quite a number of indigenous
reformist elites are "still turning a blind eye" to them.
Despite indigenous Indonesians' frequent failure to unveil the
entire racial and criminal complexity of those recent human
rights violations, it is generally construed that the typically
horrible experiences of this ethnic group have put in question,
once again, our seriousness about maintaining law and order as
well as state protection against violations of human rights.
In connection with this, the nonindigenous Indonesians'
predicament has to be addressed properly and ended by the native
majority as soon as possible so that the welfare and sensibility
of our country and nation as a whole can be restored once and for
all.
Ever since the beginning of the Dutch colonial period, the
Chinese, then classified socially as Timur Asing (Oriental
Foreigners), were marginalized in terms of their political and
cultural roles and status.
Though unkindly perceived as racial promotion by the
indigenous Indonesians, the classification which forced the
Chinese into second-class citizenship (that is to say, second to
Westerners or Europeans) was obviously an infringement on their
right to participate in the country's noneconomic sectors.
As a result, the Chinese residents of the archipelago were not
allowed to do anything but trade and distribute daily commodities
such as food and clothing. The injustice derived from this racist
policy unfortunately thrived and was maintained by the New Order
administration.
And, in order to enhance the success of this anti-Chinese
politics, the Chinese were forced to carry specially coded ID
cards.
Now, the question has arisen as to how it was all possible for
the "divide and rule" politics to survive for more than three
decades without anyone's conscious knowledge of it -- including
some of the most vocal political public figures. Also, how could
only such a small handful of people have ruled the country
successfully in a systemic and highly organized manner before the
corrupt system was finally revealed for what it was?
Firstly, it has to be realized that the Chinese community was
continuously conditioned to be a floating mass by the KKN (local
acronym for Corruption, Collusion and Nepotism) regime which
ruled the country with an iron fist. A classical example of the
power elites' determination to sacrifice this group was their
loud objections to all kinds of race-conscious self-
identification.
In other words, the power-holders had a blatant objection to
articulating any outward expression of the Chinese-Indonesian's
political aspirations or predicaments. Worse still, the idea of
Chinese "ethnicity" itself did not exist at all in the vernacular
of New Order politics. Consequently, this ethnic group was
structurally marginalized, abandoned, discriminated against,
oppressed and finally, ignored all together.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the recent establishment
of Partai Pembauran Indonesia (Indonesian Assimilation Party) and
Partai Reformasi Tionghoa Indonesia (Indonesian Chinese
Reformation Party) has been strongly criticized and suspected of
giving rise to new modes of primordialism and social exclusivity.
It has not been broadmindedly acknowledged that the context of
the awakening of political awareness was such that the inability
of the New Order government to protect its Chinese citizens from
looting, murder, rape and numerous other organized human rights
crimes motivated members of the Chinese community to defend their
rights openly. After all, they are officially and
constitutionally Indonesian nationals through and through.
The ethnic polarization, the natives on the one hand and the
nonnatives on the other, did not end there. By placing the
Chinese in an extremely vulnerable political standing, the ruling
elites used this community as a springboard for KKN practices
which eventually caused a great deal of suffering for the large
numbers of destitute Indonesians.
Like the colonial rulers who cruelly manipulated and exploited
the indigenous people, the New Order regime cleverly made use of
the handed-down discriminatory atmosphere to enrich itself
materially and to carry on with its other corrupt practices.
And, had any signs of massive rejection or suspicion from the
people appeared, the power-holders would have been able to easily
lead those justice-fighters into anti-Chinese traps.
However, they can no longer get away with this political
trickery. The colossal student movement has recently put an end
to the generations of Machiavellian politics.
Another thing worth stressing here is the policy on racial
assimilation which surprisingly contains in itself a big paradox.
Another politically engineered product, this is largely thought
of as only immortalizing the existing racial disintegration. At
the same time, this is telling us once again, as Clementino dos
Reis Amaral (a member of the Indonesian National Commission on
Human Rights) put it, that "it was the government and not the
people of the country who created racial discrimination".
In my opinion, the New Order's racial assimilation policy does
not constitute a legal product deriving from a musyawarah untuk
mufakat (mutual consensus) between the indigenous majority and
the nonindigenous minority. More often than not, the political
format of racial assimilation recommended by the New Order regime
imposed only a list of formal obligatory rules for the powerless
minority group to abide by unquestioningly.
That is the reason why the requirements for the desired racial
harmony in this respect did not in the least reflect the
universal principles of justice and human rights. The examples
would normally include: unjustified pressure on the Chinese to
indulge in biological assimilation, conversion to the religion of
the majority and cultural genocide.
In conjunction with that mainstream racist politics, all kinds
of assimilation programs jointly run with the puppet organization
BAKOM PKB tended to act a priori toward the Chinese. As they were
not allowed to have their own flexibility in assimilating
creatively, willingly, fairly, decently or naturally (based on
their diverse circumstances) with the natives, Chinese-
Indonesians became in reality victims of injustices who often had
to interact closely with a tyrannical majority.
In fighting for total reform as everyone's innermost desire
now, the reformers should never neglect the sacrifices made by
the Indonesians of Chinese descent. In addition to the Trisakti
University student martyrs, now proclaimed as reformist heroes,
the Chinese-Indonesians in their thousands were plundered,
looted, hurt, humiliated, raped and threatened cannot but be
taken into serious account.
Together with the reformist movement in recent times, the
indigenous people and the nonnatives of Indonesia should work
together to straighten out the road to the future which has been
bent by KKN as well as other serious violations.
With the collapse of political power centering around a single
hand, due to inconsistencies with its own political principles,
the sovereignty is now back in the hands of the people again.
By upholding Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution and by
correcting all kinds of mistreatments against them, native
Indonesians should try to avoid any practices of primodialistic
or ethnic nationalism and, with utmost compassion and patience,
invite their unfortunate nonnative compatriots to maximize their
contributions in all sectors of life for the sake of saving the
nation from moral as well as economic bankruptcy.
The writer is a New Zealand university graduate and a lecturer
in English. He is based in Medan.