Refusing to Be an Outsider Any Longer in the Country of Her Birth

One of my earliest memories is of hiding scared under my bed as a mob hurled rocks on our house in Bogor’s Chinatown. In retrospect, it was a fairly benign incident compared to other anti-Chinese riots that swept Indonesia in the mid-1960s and left half a million dead. I was only 6 years old then, and that was the first time I experienced fear and the meaning of racial hatred.

In the following few years, the Indonesian government issued new policies meant to reduce racial tension. It banned all cultural practices of Chinese origin and required us to change our names. My parents never felt comfortable with the new names that they picked from thin air. For us kids, what we missed most were all the celebrations surrounding the lunar new year--the lion dance, the lantern festival and, of course, the red envelopes of pocket money from neighbors and relatives. Imagine having Christmas or Hanukkah taken away from your children.

The cultural suppression worked. For years, I was ashamed of my heritage and invented stories to cover up my ethnicity. I grew up and felt that I was more Indonesian than Chinese. Every now and then, there were crude reminders. Although a ban is not formally codified, it is extremely difficult for ethnic Chinese to enter public universities or to get government scholarships, jobs or loans. I bitterly understood that no matter what I did, I never belonged in the country where my family had lived for more than four generations.

Because most Indonesian Chinese have never attended public universities or held government jobs, they’ve been further set apart. They make their livelihood in private businesses, the only sector open to them. Despite the cultural suppression and policies designed to equalize the economic status of ethnic Chinese and indigenous Indonesian, the politicial and economic distinction between them became more pronounced than ever.

In the past, scapegoating the Chinese in times of crisis did not require much imagination. Economic hardship could be boiled down to a problem of high prices, allegedly caused by Chinese middlemen’s greed. The current crisis, however, manifests itself in terms of increased unemployment and widespread layoffs. Many can link this problem to collusion, nepotism and corruption by President Suharto’s family and their cronies.

Another area ripe with discontent involves the suppression of workers’ rights. Given the level of exploitation practiced by industrial employers, I found it interesting that none of the recent riots were related to disputes regarding workers’ welfare.

In this light, viewing the riots simply as a spontaneous outburst of economic discontent does not provide a satisfactory explanation. It makes no sense that the first display of public anger has focused on small shopkeepers in Chinatown when the true causes of the people’s hardships clearly lie elsewhere.

Adding a political angle, however, shows an interesting pattern. The Chinese in Indonesia have no political representation. The political repercussion of violating their human rights has been minimal. Letting anti-Chinese riots occur is akin to lighting a fuse when political and economic frustration escalates.

As a new generation with no direct experience of the traumatic 1965 bloodshed comes of age, the desire for an open government overshadows the wish for stability that legitimized the military’s role in the past. The violent riots, however, brought back the culture of fear among the public. This fear seemingly justifies the need for a new leader to come from the military ranks at a time when many people were hoping for a democratic transition to a civilian government. It is ironic that the most recent and worst mayhem occurred as an aftermath to the killing of six student protesters at an elite private university. The last thing the six fallen students would have wished is to have their aspirations for political reform swept away in a call for law and order. The last thing Indonesia needs is another military general ruling the country.

Mimicking the images of the ‘60s when student leaders and troop members displayed warm camaraderie, last week’s news footage showed looters and military personnel in friendly hugs while the city was burning. The official explanation said that the security forces were simply outnumbered, although the show of force exhibited to prevent the May 20 rally clearly contradicted that.

What can one do to stop this abuse? As a start, I am coming forward and proudly revealing my own ethnic identity. We need to educate the public, in Indonesia and abroad, that not all Indonesian Chinese are rich and not all are uninterested in social and political issues. True integration can only happen when everybody can be whoever he or she really is.