Selective policy, selective prejudice

Selective policy, selective prejudice

I am writing in reference to the article Legally yours: Legal aspects of marrying out in the Nov. 5 edition of The Jakarta Post. As an Indonesian woman married to a foreigner I am concerned about and discriminated against by the unjust and self- righteous policy which is applied to mixed marriages in Indonesia. I am necessarily a victim of this policy's results, like hundreds of thousands of other indigenous women who live with their foreign husbands in Indonesia.

While Director General of Immigration M. Mudakir and other immigration officials contend this so-called "selective policy" is in line with the government's view of the husband as the breadwinner of the family, this never can justify Indonesia's discriminatory laws and regulations concerning cross-cultural marriages.

It makes this policy rather more questionable, especially in respect of its contribution to the benefit of our country and its people. If we really want to understand why this selective policy still persists in Indonesia, we simply have to ask the following questions: Who are the real winners and beneficiaries in upholding this obviously discriminatory policy against women? Who benefits most from this policy? Is it really the poor people of our country?

Readers may answer these questions by themselves. My husband, an academic, is retired and lives on a pension. He built our house here with his own money and he bears all the costs of our livelihood by taking good care of his family. He even supports my parents and some of my poor relatives, through his own goodwill and as best he can. By building our house my husband gave work to about 40 indigenous people for a period of 18 months; so he kept alive about 40 families with his money. He pays the wages of our pembantu (servants) and keeps alive their families by doing so.

But my husband has to bear all the costs for going out to Singapore every six months to renew his social visa, and he also pays the unjustifiably high immigration fees for its monthly extension. The amount of money my husband has to pay for extending his visa only for one month would keep alive an average indigenous family for the same period of time.

And he is not alone in doing so. Hundreds of thousands of foreigners who live in our country and are married to Indonesian women are forced to do the same. They all are forced by our laws and the selective policy to bear the same fate. All those foreigners are considered and misused as the cash cows of our nation -- and so are their wives and so are their children.

Even if the government has to take care of 202 million people, as Mr. Mudakir's colleague Harsono Widodo said, I have the innate right to request from you, Mr. Widodo, and from our government as well, that it acknowledge and respect that I am also one of these 202 million. And there are some hundreds of thousands out there, Mr. Widodo, who are Indonesians, like you, but who happen to be married to foreigners. The only person who is taking care of me and my family, like thousands of my fellow Indonesians, is my foreign husband -- and not the government or immigration with its selective policy.

What Indonesian women married to foreigners really need and deserve as human beings are contemporary modern laws which provide fair and human conditions for them and their families. These laws should not only respect our very personal decision about our choice of a marriage partner, but should not discriminate against us for our decision.

I want to express my thanks to Mrs. Nursyahbani and all other enlightened Indonesian lawyers who share her view. These people have realized and spoken out about the fact that the current laws concerning cross-cultural marriages, directly or indirectly, are sexist and discriminatory.

KETUT ARIANIK

Denpasar, Bali