Southeast Asia's Chinese winning freedoms

Southeast Asia's Chinese winning freedoms

Karl Malakunas, Agence France-Presse, Singapore

Many of Southeast Asia's 20 million ethnic Chinese are welcoming in the Lunar New Year with increasing freedoms, but the specter of discrimination still weighs heavily across parts of the region.

On the surface Indonesia offers hope of progress for Chinese who for centuries have faced resentment for their economic success and racial difference, with the New Year declared a national public holiday for the first time only last year.

Previously a 1967 law had forbidden the public display of Chinese culture and religion, reflecting anti-Chinese sentiment not only within the local population but also among their former Dutch colonial masters.

The law began to be watered down toward the end of former dictator Soeharto's reign that ended in 1998 but was only fully revoked under current President Megawati Soekarnoputri.

Indonesia, a mostly Muslim nation of 214 million people, is home to about eight million ethnic Chinese.

They are the largest group in a Southeast Asian diaspora of more than 20 million who mainly trace their roots to Guangdong and Fujian provinces in southern China and are renowned for their work ethic and business sense.

Thailand and Malaysia have the next biggest Chinese populations at over five million, followed by Singapore with more than two million, Myanmar with about 1.5 million, and then the Philippines and Vietnam.

In all but Singapore, where they make up nearly 80 percent of the population, the Chinese have had to battle problems common to many minority groups worldwide, with an added pinch of resentment at their economic success.

Leo Suryadinata, a senior research fellow at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, said it was impossible to determine the exact number of ethnic Chinese partly because of the discrimination they have faced.

This had led to many ethnic Chinese changing their surnames as part of efforts to blend in with the majority race in the countries in which they lived, said Suryadinata, who has written extensively on the issue.

"In Indonesia a Western name or an Indian name is considered Indonesian, only a Chinese name is not, so many have adopted a Javanese name," Suryadinata said.

He said official discrimination against the ethnic Chinese of Southeast Asia had for a long time been the deepest in Indonesia.

"But now I cannot say the worst is Indonesia now that the government is introducing much more enlightened policies," he said.

Suryadinata said other more subtle developments, such as the recent opening of a Chinese-language university in Kuala Lumpur, reflected small moves toward less discrimination, partly due to global multiculturalism.

In nations such as Thailand race is already much less of a problem with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and his predecessor, Chuan Leekpai, both carrying Chinese ancestry.

More than 10 percent of Thailand's population is ethnic Chinese and, although they dominate the business and political arenas, they are so tightly integrated with the rest of the community they do not form a distinct group.

Ethnic Chinese also enjoy all the rights given to other citizens in the Philippines and, like elsewhere in the region, have widespread economic influence through their success in banking, manufacturing and other sectors.

However ethnic Chinese are particularly vulnerable in the Philippines to kidnapping-for-ransom gangs, who believe Chinese have large amounts of money and would be reluctant to report being victimized.

And while Indonesia has given ethnic Chinese the right to express their identity, more than 50 laws and regulations remain that discriminate against them, Indonesian rights lawyer Frans Hendra Winarta said.