Registration for Jakarta's of stateless Chinese begins
Registration for Jakarta's of stateless Chinese begins
JAKARTA (JP): Hundreds of Chinese who lack proper citizenship
documents registered at the Tambora and Tamansari district
offices in West Jakarta yesterday as the city administration
began collecting data expected to settle their immigration
status.
As of yesterday afternoon, almost 300 Chinese were present at
the Tamansari district office, over 100 of whom registered
themselves.
According to the chief of the office, Satibi Darwis, those who
have not registered yet lacked some of the documents required for
adopting Indonesian citizenship.
Satibi said that there are over 5,000 Chinese in the area, or
three percent of the district's total population, who are
categorized as stateless.
"The 5,000 are only those previously registered, while the
unregistered stateless Chinese living in this district are
estimated to total over 1,500 people," Satibi told The Jakarta
Post.
The current registration is offered free of charge to
stimulate the people of Chinese descent, who are still stateless,
to register.
The people of Chinese descent who are considered stateless are
those who do not have either Chinese or Indonesian citizenship.
The suspension of diplomatic ties between the People's Republic
of China and Indonesia in the wake of the 1965 aborted communist
coup made it impossible for the people of Chinese descent
resident in Indonesia to apply for Chinese citizenship. Ties were
restored in 1990.
Informed Sources at the Tambora district office said the total
number of registered stateless Chinese in the area reached 5,500
people, or two percent of the total population. It is estimated
that another 2,000 stateless Chinese remain unregistered in the
district.
A number of the Chinese classified as stateless in the Tambora
and Tamansari districts interviewed by the Post said they had
long wanted to naturalize and become Indonesian citizens but did
not have enough money to afford it.
"Several years ago, it cost me millions of rupiah to get
Indonesian citizenship," said Alex, an Indonesian citizen of
Chinese descent, who was seeking information for his still
stateless relatives at the Tamansari district office.
T.M. Pardede, head of the assimilation agency at the
Directorate General of Social and Politic Affairs of the Ministry
of Home Affairs, the registration will last up to October.
"We'll open this opportunity until October. But if until then,
they still do not register, we will introduce another measure,"
Pardede told the Post while inspecting the registration in
Tamansari and Tambora, the two largest areas in the capital where
many Chinese reside.
Rp 160 million
After being registered, each person who qualifies can apply
for Indonesian citizenship, while the rest will be given
documents to confirm their foreign citizenship.
For naturalization, each person has to have more than a dozen
documents, including a birth certificate, a document certifying
loyalty to the nation and good conduct papers, which may cost
each individual a total of Rp 647,000 (US$302).
Reliable sources at City Hall said the municipal
administration has allocated some Rp 160 million to finance the
registration. The funds are taken from this fiscal year budget
for the capital.
Records at the city population affairs office show that around
27,500 stateless Chinese live in the capital, while data at the
Directorate General of Immigration of the Ministry of Justice
lists the number stateless of Chinese in the city at only 4,200.
Hario Subayu of the immigration office said he could
understand the big difference between the records at his office
and those of the city administration.
"The city administration has its own officials collecting data
down to the neighborhood unit level, while we depend heavily on
voluntary reregistration," Hario said. (jsk/11)