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Indonesian
Chinese Face Economic Discrimination
by Andreas Harsono - American
Reporter Correspondent
Many Chinese-descent Indonesians are worried about the new
Indonesian government's economic policy, fearing they may
become victims of discrimination advocated by Vice President
Jusuf Kalla.
Kalla has argued in some media interviews that the new government
would like to help "the small and medium enterprises"
but said that "90 to 95 percents of the small businessmen
are pribumis."
"Pribumi" is a Bahasa Indonesia word which literary
means "native." It is relatively a new word in
the new language to define the different ethnic groups in
Indonesia but to exclude the Chinese, Indians, Caucasians
and Arab minorities. The Chinese is the largest group among
those categories.
Kalla said the Chinese business community, which dominates
retail business and controls major conglomerations, should
help the government implement the new economic policy. "If
Malaysia implements race, we should implement group (policy),"
he was quoted as saying by the Jakarta-based Sinar Harapan
daily.
Kalla himself is a
successful businessman. He is the major shareholder and
former chairman of the Kalla Group, based in Makassar in
southern Sulawesi, a region is dominated by ethnic Bugis.
He was heavily involved in former President Suharto's Golkar
Party during Suharto's authoritarian rule and once was fired
on corruption charges as a trade minister when serving President
Abdurrahman Wahid. But Kalla was never investigated and
many believed the allegation was weak.
He walked away from Golkar Pary earlier this year to join
presidential candidate Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The pair
won a landslide election last month and were inaugurated
as president and vice president on Oct. 20. It was the first
direct presidential and vice presidential election held
in Indonesia's modern history.
Some leading Chinese figures, however, have expressed concern
over Kalla's racist remarks. A meeting was also held with
Wahid, himself a leading Muslim scholar and advocate of
minorities rights, the day before their inauguration.
Frans Hendra Winata, a human rights lawyer and a founder
of the Indonesian Institute on Anti Discrimination, told
Wahid that many Chinese businessmen are small and medium-scale
traders, and that Kalla's rhetoric would create more problems
in Indonesia instead of narrowing the gap between the rich
and the poor. They asked Wahid to pay attention to Kalla's
racist views.
Wahid agreed with his guests. "His statement is emotional
and illogical. I am prepared to die to fight against it,"
he told the media.
The Internet news site Detikcom quoted Wahid as saying,
"All citizens should adhere to our Constitution and
that kind of statement is not proper to be said by someone
like Jusuf Kalla." Wahid, however, called on the Chinese
to "calm down," saying that the statement is a
political matter which does not involve powerful institutions.
He also called on President Yudhoyono to control Kalla.
Indonesia is a culturally diverse country. Chinese settlers
began settling in this southeast Asian country more than
1,500 years ago. Kalla's statement is ironic the ethnic
violence that has taken place in Indonesia over the last
seven years. Much of the violence took place because some
local groups oppose the settlement of migrants from different
ethic groups from other parts of Indonesia.
The Acehnese drove away thousands of Javanese migrants from
the northern tip of Sumatera Island over the last five years.
The Dayak killed more than 2,000 Madurese migrants on Kalimantan
Island in a bloody headhunting rampage three years ago.
The Papuans and the Molluccans are against the Bugis traders
settling in Papua and the Molluccas. Many other "natives"
in many parts of Indonesia also demand that governors, regents,
district chiefs, and even deans in local colleges should
be "putra daerah," which literally means "local
sons," in order to stop settlers from becoming involved
in governance or academia. It is not clear whether Jusuf
Kalla understands the consequences of his racist remarks
directed toward his own Bugis countrymen.
Scholars write that Indonesia is basically an artificial
nation lacking firm historical roots. It comprises 13,677
islands, stretching over a distance from east to west that
is approximately the same as from London to Moscow. It is
the world's largest Muslim country but has a significant
Christian majority in the east. Its 220 million people speak
more than 300 different languages and their common history
includes a Dutch colonial past and a lingua franca developed
from the Malay language.
Ivan Wibowo, another Chinese lawyer, wrote in The Jakarta
Post that Kalla's anti-Chinese observations could be seen
in his official Website,
www.jusufkalla.com, in which Kalla advocates an economic
policy mirrored on Malaysia's "affirmative action"
for the "bumiputera," which has prevailed there
since the 1970s. "Bumiputera" is the Malaysian
equivalent of the word "pribumi."
Kalla also advocated the reintroduction of the Assaat Movement
set up by Assaat, an Indonesian businessman, once the acting
president of Republic Indonesia in 1950. Assaat accused
the Chinese of being "opportunists" in a public
speech in 1956, calling on the government to enact an affirmative
action for the pribumis.
His speech prompted a nationwide campaign and produced a
1959 government regulation which barred Indonesians of Chinese
descent from owning a business beyond the local level. The
Indonesian military vehemently supported the regulation,
resulting in 130,000 Chinese-Indonesians leaving this country.
But it created ecomnomic chaos by disrupting the chain of
distribution because many Chinese traders were involved
in retail businesses.
Australian scholar Herbert Feith, in his classic, "The
Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia" (Cornell
University Press, 1962), called the Assaat Movement "racist"
and described how the Chinese issue was used to whip up
nationalist sentiment among ethnic groups.
According to Wibowo, Kalla argued on his Website that Assaat's
policy would provide an opportunity for the pribumi to handle
distribution. Kalla said the objective of this affirmative
action is "to limit the expansion and existence of
non pribumi ... 75 percent of the distribution of staple
commodities should be in the hands of pribumi."
But anti-Chinese riots break out regularly in Indonesia,
as does other ethnic violence. A much stronger anti-Chinese
fever took root in 1965 when the military, led by General
Suharto, took over power from founding President Sukarno,
who had built a close alliance with the Communist bloc,
including Beijing. Chinese-language schools were closed
down. Chinese-language characters were banned. Many Chinese
temples were closed.
That era peaked in May 1998, when Suharto was forced to
give up power. However, more than 2,500 people, mostly looters
who died in burning buildings in Jakarta, were killed in
a huge anti-Chinese riot aimed at Chinese-owned properties.
The Kalla website, however, was updated with another Website's
profile of Jusuf Kalla last week. No explanation was offered
for the change.
But not every Chinese leader agrees that Kalla is a racist.
Sofyan Wanandi, the chairman of the Gemala group and an
advisor to the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce, told Radio
Australia, "... what everybody is talking about Jusuf
Kalla, according to me is not true. You know he's a businessman.
Sometimes he is too direct, but cannot explain that in the
right way and that creates a misjudgement also from the
Chinese community. I don't believe there will be a policy
from the government to discriminate and have a racial policy
specially against the Chinese. I don't believe that."
For now, it's a wait-and-see situation. Yudhoyono and Kalla
have selected a variety of economic ministers, who include
Aburizal Bakrie, a former chairman of the Chamber of Commerce,
and Mari E. Pangestu, a economist of Chionese descent who
is active in a Jakarta think tank, where Wanandi is a scholar,
as well as other economists.
AR Correspondent Andreas Harsono has written for us since
1995 and won the
Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 1999 and other
international journalism awards. He is currently writing
his first book, on ethnic and religious conflicts in Indonesia.
He is a third-generation Indonesian Chinese. M (AH/ARC/IM)
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