Roots of anti-Chinese sentiment

By Onghokham

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Chinese, as they are referred to, are an important element among Indonesia's middle and upper class capitalists, entrepreneurs, business people, traders, professionals and skilled people.

It should not be forgotten that although there are also poor Chinese, seven or eight of the top 10 capitalists in Indonesia are of Chinese origin. On the list of the 200 richest people in the country over 50 percent are Chinese.

Indicative of this predominance in the economy is the proliferation of Chinese-owned shops along the main streets of all Indonesian towns and cities. The retail trade is an important aspect of the livelihood made by the Chinese community in Indonesia.

The Chinese are not a homogeneous group and are almost as diverse as the archipelago itself. The Chinese in Java came as individuals or in small groups and arrived here even before people from the West. The migrants largely became integrated into the local population so that now Javanese-Chinese in the main do not speak any of the Chinese languages.

In West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo and on the East- coast of Sumatra, the Chinese migrated as whole communities to work on plantations and in mines. The Chinese in these regions have retained their own languages. In Northern Sulawesi (Celebes) and the Moluccas they have become assimilated into local society.

In addition to these different circumstances, the Chinese practice a variety of religions, including denominations of the Christian faith, Buddhism and Taoism.

The origins of the Chinese minority dates, like so many other things in modern Indonesia, from the days of the Dutch colonial regime. Both the Dutch and the Chinese were trading peoples and came to the archipelago for that purpose.

The Chinese were the trading partners of the Dutch, right from the early days of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC), and they never lost this intermediary position. This did not mean that relations were always smooth. In fact, the first massacre of Chinese occurred in Batavia in 1740 and was perpetrated by members of the Dutch population in the city.

After this event, the Dutch enforced an official racial segregation policy. The Chinese had to live in their own quarters, which were found in all towns, and a permit was required to travel between Chinese areas in different cities. This ghetto system restricting Chinese physical mobility was not abolished until 1905.

The Dutch East Indies split the population of the archipelago into three groups for administrative purposes -- Europeans, Foreign Orientals, and Natives. The system was an embryonic form of what later became known in South Africa as apartheid, and which now has pariah status among the world's political ideologies. It is therefore a fallacy that Dutch favoritism helped the Chinese into their powerful economic position.

Strong anti-Chinese sentiment existed among Dutch colonial officials and was particularly evident under the Ethical Policy (1900) which was introduced to promote the interests of the indigenous population. Dutch colonial officials felt they had to protect the native population against the shrewd Chinese.

However, this and other discriminatory practices did not mean that the Chinese did not flourish under the colonial system.

Wealth has traditionally been made through governments in the Indonesian archipelago. In the nineteenth century, the Chinese were granted the privilege to grow and trade in opium and to run pawn shops in exchange for lucrative tax payments which they had to make to the government. This did not endear them to the native population. Farms were usually owned by semi-hereditary headmen. The owners were also usually the main traders because their favored status with the government meant that they and their agents were exempt from the travel restrictions imposed on other members of the Chinese community. This system promoted the development of Chinese capitalism.

The Chinese, as Dutch trading partners, were subjected to Dutch property and business laws. From the early 20th century they were also subjected to Dutch family law. These laws gave the Chinese a degree of security on their commercial holdings which could not be obtained under the arbitrary adat (traditional) law which was laid down upon them by the high and mighty Indonesians of the day.

Protection afforded by Western law and their position as traders placed the Chinese beyond the reach of the vitriolic sentiment of Dutch official, which was said to be worse than the anti-Chinese sentiment held by the other colonial powers of the day, including Britain and France.

It is often said that newly independent countries reflect their recent colonial past, which may go some way toward explaining the anti-Chinese sentiment held by Indonesian officials today.

Colonial anti-Chinese polices gave rise to the so called Chinese movement in Java, which aimed to emancipate the Chinese community by demanding that restrictions on the movement of members of their community be abolished, full equality before the law, and the establishment of Chinese schools.

The movement was the first emancipation movement which the Dutch faced from their colonial subjects. The movement was not anti-colonial in nature. It only sought rights for the Chinese people of the Indies and did not speak for natives or other ethnic groups. Political and social movements tended to retain the segregated character of the colonial society which spawned them and speak only for a single ethnic group.

Around 1900, most of the Chinese demands were met and Dutch- Chinese Schools (HCS) were launched by the colonial government, even before the Dutch Schools for Natives (HIS) came into existence.

When the government lifted the ban restricting Chinese mobility in 1905, Chinese business people moved out of the ghettos and came increasingly into competition with the Javanese entrepreneurial classes.

The Sarekat Dagang Islam (Association of Moslem Traders), which later became the Sarekat Islam (1909), formed in response to this development, and went on to become the first mass social and political movement in the Indies.

The first anti-Chinese riot occurred in 1918 in the town of Kudus, which had a strong Javanese and Moslem bourgeoisie. The catalyst was a Chinese temple procession which offended the Moslem population, however the incident occurred against a backdrop of middle class rivalries.

All other Indonesian political movements were equally exclusive and admitted Indonesians only. Even the PNI (Nationalist Party) formed by Sukarno in 1926 admitted Chinese only as observers. The exception to this exclusivity was the Indies Association of Tjipto Mangoenkoesoemo, Douwes Dekker and Ki Hajar Dewantara which accepted Chinese and other ethnic groups as members.

In response to being largely excluded from the jostling for political power, Chinese professionals who advocated an independent Indonesia formed the Partai Tionghoa Indonesia (Indonesian-Chinese party) in 1930.

In the late 1930s, the left wing PARTINDO lead by Amir Syarifudin decided to accept Chinese members, whereas the more rightist PARINDRA would not.

That was the situation when the Japanese invaded in 1942. Only after the invasion did mass anti-Chinese violence explode for the first time. The worst hit areas were on the north coast of Java and the targets were mainly the homes and shops of wealthy Chinese.

Indonesia's history since the war has been violent in comparison to its immediate neighbors Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

However during the revolution against the Dutch, not all violence was directed toward the Chinese. Eurasians, Moluccans and the traditional elite were also targeted. The only notable anti-Chinese incident during the revolution occurred in Tangerang, near Jakarta.

The 1950s saw the introduction of policies which discriminated against the Chinese, including the "Benteng" policy which attempted to encourage the rise of an Indonesian business class, and later bans on foreign Chinese trade and settlement in rural areas.

During the early 1960s, the country's economy deteriorated and the Chinese became a pawn in Cold War politics. Several serious urban riots which targeted the Chinese occurred during the unsettled period of 1965/1966, although most violence was directed against suspected communists.

Punch and counterpunch of pro- and anti-communist forces lead to serious unrest in Indonesia, which many experts abroad mistakenly interpreted as a massacre of the Chinese. This misunderstanding may have arisen as a result of the introduction of a ban on many aspects of Chinese life and culture which the government introduced around the same time. Among aspects of Chinese culture declared illegal were plays (but not films), public festivities and Chinese characters. A drive to encourage Chinese to adopt local names was also launched to coincide with this suppression of Chinese culture.

Under the New Order government, tensions between the Chinese and native communities grew as a result of the widening gap between rich and poor in the country, and the low pay given to the state bureaucracy, military and police. Furthermore, while the native population turned ever more toward Islam, the Chinese sought spiritual comfort through the Christian faith.

Violent incidents during the New Order government have been racial and religious in nature. Violence can destabilize any government and is revolutionary in nature. It is a criminal act, regardless of whom it is directed against or who is using it to advantage.

Violence is no solution to the tensions that exist in society. The only way to achieve harmony is to change one's perceptions of society and view it as a multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi- cultural entity. The Indonesian nation is political concept, and to ensure future stability different ethnic groups must be treated in the same way and meet as equals under the same legal protection.

Recent anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta happened as a result of jealousy and racist sentiment. The Chinese community has shown creativity and achieved economic success, despite their unpopular position in society. The feudal elite, as obsessed by power and status as the Chinese are by money, felt threatened by this success and became jealous.

Today, private enterprise is at a standstill, many buildings stand in ruins and government and military authority are fast waning.

Paku Buwono (Nail of the Universe) is the traditional title given to the Javanese monarchy. If the Nail is removed the Universe will collapse. History in Indonesia is cyclical, but nobody seems to learn from it.

The writer is a historian.

Window : As a result of the colonial anti-Chinese polices there arose the so called Chinese movement in Java aiming at emancipating the Chinese by demanding the abolition of the physical restrictions on Chinese, equality before the law, establishment of Chinese schools and others.