RI's oppressed minorities

RI's oppressed minorities

The Chinese in Indonesia have been well served by the policies
of Indonesia's post-Independence governments, which have
maintained a discriminatory, emasculating regulatory scheme that
deprives Chinese-Indonesians of basic civil rights.

Now the Chinese live in fear of physical attack from run-amok
masses of pribumi (indigenous Indonesian) looters. Chinese-
Indonesians are a numerically very small ethnic minority in
Indonesia and doubly "minoritized" by the fact that they are
generally also adherents of one of the minority religions in a
country which highly values religious unity.

But Chinese-Indonesians are different from minority groups in
other countries in a very significant way. Their minority status
and the consequent denial of civil rights and privileges has not
led to economic oppression as it has for minority populations in
virtually every other nation.

Usually, political power and economic strength go hand in
hand. For minorities in many places, political power has not been
so much an end in itself as the means to secure the economic
opportunities they have been denied. For Chinese-Indonesians,
however, economic opportunities have not been denied. In fact,
while privately criticizing the system which has denied them
civil rights unlike other oppressed minority groups, Chinese-
Indonesians have largely demurred from taking concerted action in
pursuit of political rights.

Indonesia is atypical in that a minority group which has been
denied civil rights has been able to flourish economically, to
the point of holding the major share of the country's wealth. For
this reason, the terms minority and oppression as they are
customarily used, may not be the most helpful language to use in
speaking Indonesia's situation.

Chinese-Indonesians are not typical of oppressed minorities.
In many ways the pribumi are more oppressed though by economic
deprivation rather than by the absence of civil rights. Many
pribumi would, I venture to say, gladly trade their right to
government employment, their possession of an uncoded identity
card, their access to state universities for the freedom of
lifestyle that economic privilege can bring. The Chinese-
Indonesian minority might not be as interested in a corresponding
trade-off of economic opportunities for civil rights.

The reservoirs of resentment within both ethnic groups are
deepening. As long as individuals are preoccupied with blaming
the other group ("The Indonesians deny us our full rights"/"The
Chinese control all the wealth") the profounder causes of
oppression and violence remain and are unaddressed.

The enemy is not each other. Chinese-Indonesians and the
pribumi need each other. The country needs the capital that the
Chinese have built up, their business expertise and the
distribution networks. Chinese-owned businesses need pribumi
manpower and the pribumi consumer market. If the pribumi are
driven to mass violence by unjustified price inflations and
substandard wages, or if the Chinese are driven away by large-
scale violence, everyone suffers.

Violence. The person whose shop has been looted and burned,
the rape victim, they are obvious, tragic victims of dramatic
violence. The persons who labor in factories, mills and shrimp
farms for wages so low they cannot support a family in dignity,
in a work environment where there is no regard for workers'
health and safety, these are also victims of violence. So are
those whose life savings were wiped out in bank liquidations
resulting from white-collar crimes of corruption.

Who are the oppressed? Who are the victims? The enemy is not
each other. Ordinary Chinese and pribumi are both victims of the
collusive partnership between high-level pribumi officials and
Chinese owners of Indonesia's megabusinesses. These partnerships
and the corruption they spawned have victimized the country
without regard for ethnic identity. This collusive partnership
system is the oppressor. Ordinary middle-class and poor pribumi
and Chinese alike are its victims. Can the two communities now
cooperate to recover from violence and oppression together?

DONNA K. WOODWARD

Medan, North Sumatra