SBKRI: Segregation in practice
Frans H. Winarta, Council Member Human Rights Institute International Bar Association (IBA), Jakarta
The document of citizenship affecting Chinese-Indonesians, the SBKRI, has been a nagging problem for the country, in addition to the 60 other regulations and decrees that discriminate against ethnic Chinese, who account for up to 3 percent of the total population.
Segregation started in colonial times, and the SBKRI is nothing but a continuation of this policy of segregation. After the abortive coup d'etat in 1965, the New Order government and the Army developed the paradigm that Chinese-Indonesians were prone to sympathize with communists and that the People's Republic of China supported the coup attempt.
The minister of justice introduced the SBKRI in a 1978 decree, which stipulated that every citizen, particularly those of foreign descent, must apply for a SBKRI at the ministry.
In practice the decree was interpreted as only applying to Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent, and thus became a form of apartheid or state-sponsored racial discrimination, which is expressed in laws and customs similar to those in the South Africa of the apartheid era.
The requirement of the SBKRI was reiterated in a 1980 joint decree issued by the minister of justice and the minister of internal affairs, with the provision that an SBKRI may be granted to an adult of foreign descent who wishes to become an Indonesian citizen. Later on, the SBKRI became legal evidence of citizenship for Chinese-Indonesians.
Although the President has revoked the decrees, the certificate is still required by schools, universities and various government offices, from the immigration office and subdistrict offices to the civil registration office and the land agency.
Obtaining an SBKRI has become the source of corruption amounting to billions of rupiah per annum. Kompas daily reported last year that the cost of obtaining an SBKRI ranged from Rp 2 million to Rp 7.5 million.
Not every Chinese-Indonesian can afford such sums. As a result quite a percentage of them are stateless, some are illegally married with children officially born out of wedlock, some cannot enter state and private universities -- and the worst is that they are helpless to fight back as they are politically weak due to the expulsion of Chinese-Indonesians from politics more than three decades ago.
It will take political will from the government to put an end to these racist and discriminative policies, which run counter to the principle of equality in the law and human rights.
The current policies could amount to cultural genocide as described by Geoffrey Robertson (Crimes Against Humanity), who includes in his definition of the term the prohibition of the use of a group's language, "rewriting or obliterating its history or destroying its icons".
According to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, genocide is defined as the intention to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.
By eliminating discriminative laws and policies, the government of Megawati would be able to improve the country's human rights record. Discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians has been an international and national concern for decades, and was critically watched and observed by international human rights organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists. Among the local campaigners to end the discrimination are the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation, Solidaritas Nusa dan Bangsa and Gandi.
Hopefully, by working together we can put an end to the discrimination suffered by Chinese-Indonesians.