Indonesia - Economic Crisis Leads to Scapegoating of Ethnic Chinese (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Sorry for the poor formatting on the last message

Robert Weissman
Essential Information			|   Internet:	rob@essential.org

===========================================================
Human Rights Watch
Asia Division
February 1998

INDONESIA ALERT

ECONOMIC CRISIS LEADS TO SCAPEGOATING OF ETHNIC CHINESE 

The rise in prices of basic goods such as rice and cooking oil has led to
violent protests across Indonesia, much of it aimed at the ethnic Chinese
minority who dominate the retail economy.  The rioting appears to have
been largely spontaneous, but Human Rights Watch believes that senior
government and military officials have fueled anti-Chinese sentiment
through veiled references to "rats" and "traitors" and by their failure to
explain that high prices and food shortages are not the fault of
individual retailers. Human Rights Watch calls on the government to state
explicitly that the ethnic Chinese are a valued and important part of
Indonesian society and that violence against them and their property will
not be tolerated. Denouncing communal violence in generic terms is not
enough. The government should cease immediately the harassment of two
prominent members of the ethnic Chinese community, Jusuf and Sofyan
Wanandi. Finally, it needs to begin immediately a longer-term effort to
end the discrimination against the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia that has
existed since the late 1950s. In a commentary in the February 3, 1998
edition of the Asian Wall Street Journal, Indonesia expert Adam Schwarz
suggested that President Soeharto take the lead by including an ethnic
Chinese in his next cabinet. The government would do well to take that
suggestion to heart. 


Over the last two months, violence against ethnic Chinese has erupted
across the country. After a series of outbreaks in Java, the unrest had by
mid-February hit the islands of Sumatra, Sulawesi, Lombok, Sumbawa, and
Flores as well. In most cases, the protests have been related to sharp
increases in the prices of the so-called nine basic commodities (among
them rice, wheat flour, cooking oil, sugar, soybeans, and eggs) as a
result of the dramatic loss in value of the rupiah, the Indonesian
currency. The targets of the violence have been Chinese-owned shops,
homes, and businesses. 

In none of the dozens of outbreaks of violence chronicled in this report
(available on-line at:  http://www.hrw.org/hrw/press98/feb/indo-al1.htm )
has there been evidence of direct government instigation of the rioters,
and the government has been quick to send troops to disturbed areas and
arrest alleged ringleaders. Nevertheless, some senior officials have
appeared to endorse the anti- Chinese sentiment.  Not only have they
expressed no sympathy for the victims or made any effort to explain to the
public the causes and consequences of the economic crisis, but in some
cases, they have tried to deflect blame for the economic crisis onto
prominent members of the ethnic Chinese community.

On January 14, for example, the commander of the armed forces in a press
conference called on the owners of thirteen large conglomerates to bring
their dollars back from abroad and convert them to rupiah. Nowhere was the
word "Chinese" mentioned, but the appeal was an implicit accusation that
wealthy Chinese were contributing to the currency crisis by selfishly
keeping dollars stashed abroad at a time when the rupiah needed
bolstering. In late January, Lt.Gen. Syarwan Hamid was reported to have
made pointed references to the ethnic Chinese as "rats" who have no sense
of patriotism and who at a time of crisis are salting away "the fruits of
our national development."  President Soeharto's son-in-law, Maj. Gen.
Prabowo Subianto, then head of the army Special Forces (Kopassus) and
since promoted to commander of the Strategic Reserve (Kostrad, the army's
most elite unit), attended a much-publicized breaking of the Ramadan fast
with Muslim leaders on January 23 during which he blamed the crisis on a
political conspiracy, and others attending explicitly linked the
conspirators to "the conglomerate group" and those with their "henchmen
operating overseas."  The two phrases were clear references to the ethnic
Chinese, and Prabowo, instead of distancing himself from the remarks,
tacitly endorsed them, urging a united front between the army and Islam. 
By warning over and over that the draconian anti-subversion law would be
applied to hoarders of basic goods without at the same time explaining the
difficulties that many shopkeepers are facing, the army has helped
generate suspicions that any shop owner who refuses to sell at pre-crisis
prices, or who closes his or her shop for fear of violence, is
deliberately making goods scarce to keep prices high. The most obvious
example of high-level attempts to focus the spotlight on the ethnic
Chinese has been the army's targeting of prominent businessman Sofyan
Wanandi, in an incident described more fully below.

Veiled and not-so-veiled attacks on the patriotism of the ethnic Chinese
have a long history in Indonesia, going back to the Chinese role in the
Dutch colonial period and to the 1960s and the army's suspicion that the
ethnic Chinese as a group were a fifth column for the Chinese Communist
Party. The attacks then were as unfair as they are now, but for reasons
that will be explained below, they resonate strongly in Indonesian
society, especially, though not exclusively, among more conservative
Muslim groups. The Soeharto government has continued a policy of
discrimination against the ethnic Chinese, restricting their admission to
state universities and the civil service and maintaining a ban on the use
of Chinese characters, while at the same time, leaving their dominance of
the Indonesian economy intact and enabling a few dozen ethnic Chinese
families to amass fabulous wealth. These policies have resulted in a
public image of the ethnic Chinese as rich pariahs. The irony is that with
the exception of the Wanandi brothers, the main victims of this round of
unrest are not members of the estimated forty extremely wealthy families
whose heads have earned the appellation cukong, or tycoon, but the
shopkeepers who constitute a critical part of Indonesia's middle class.

You can access complete report on our web site by pointing your web
browser at:  http://www.hrw.org/hrw/press98/feb/indo-al1.htm

If you don't have access to the Web then send your request for a copy of
this report by email to hrwatchnyc@igc.org
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