SBY tells Chinese Indonesians they are equal citizens

Indonesians President SBY has told a Chinese Indonesian group, that Chinese Indonesians are equal citizens. This might sounds strange to a westerner, but since the Suharto era, Indonesia has had an overtly racist policy towards Chinese people.

Until a few years ago, Chinese Indonesians were not considered Indonesian by the government and had to get a Chinese passport in order to travel. Ika has told me that when a Chinese person goes to get an ID card or some other necessary document, the price will be higher, than for another Indonesian.

In this country, they print your religion on your ID card. For a long time Confusionism was not recognized in Indonesia. Also Chinese characters were not permitted to be used in public, if a Chinese Indonesian had a shop, he could write his sign in Bahasa, English, Arabic or another language, but not Chinese. The list of things goes on, but SBY wants to end all that. He told a group of 5,000 Confusians to keep sharing with less fortunate members of society as well as disaster victims. Of course there is a lot of history and coded language going on. Chinese traders played a part in Indonesia’s history going way back. More savvy than local people, they often did well, when the locals were starving. In Lombok, the Dutch imposed a strict tax, which had to be paid in the special Dutch currency of the East Indies. The only way the locals could get the currency was to sell their goods to Chinese traders. At one point the majority of rice being produced in Lombok was getting shipped to other islands, the locals ended up starving and destitute.

This and other events has created the impression that Chinese Indonesians are all savvy business people and have money. SBY was basically telling them ‘look, times are changing and we’ll treat you better, but you have to start cutting the locals some slack economically’.

Let’s hope everyone treats everyone else with respect, honesty and shares the wealth.