The Press

CHRIS MOORE

Jakarta's Chinese community has become a favourite target for rioters in volatile Indonesia. Last month National MP Pansy Wong visited Jakarta to convey the concerns of New Zealanders.

Communal and racial violence have been life's bitter tea for an elderly woman in Jakarta's Chinese district. During her lifetime the 80-year-old has encountered and escaped from three violent episodes of political and racial conflict: one in China and two in Indonesia.

I assured them that the international community was with them. --Pansy Wong National MP

She has 10 children, none of whom can afford to travel overseas. Together with many others, they appear to be trapped by the spiralling and increasingly ethnic violence in South-east Asia's largest nation.

For Pansy Wong, the Hong Kong-born New Zealand member of Parliament, a recent visit to Jakarta five months after the May riots revealed the desperate situation facing the country's Chinese community.

During the mid-1960s, hundreds of thousands of people, including many Indonesian Chinese, were slaughtered during fierce anti-communist rioting.

In May 1998, it seemed as if history was repeating itself, as mobs of the landless and urban poor, Indonesia's abangan, took advantage of the pro- democracy protests to loot, burn, and rape their way through the Chinese communities throughout Java, some of which had existed since the 14th century.

The entrepreneurial Chinese, with their commercial skills, mesh of contacts, and social cohesiveness, are soft targets in Indonesia's volatile environment of economic, religious, and political turmoil.

While the cukong, the small but wealthy Chinese elite traditionally protected by the Indonesian military and political establishment, escaped relatively unscathed, it was the small-business people and shop owners who bore the full fury of the recent violence.

The Chinese community in Jakarta became a favourite target for the rioters who ran amok, while in many instances the army and police failed to intervene.

By July more than 3000 mainly Asian New Zealanders had demonstrated in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch against the rape of Indonesian Chinese women during the riots. A petition was signed by 10,000 people, and presented to the Indonesian Ambassador in Wellington.

National list MP Pansy Wong saw the display of public emotion by New Zealand's normally reticent Asian community as unprecedented, and decided to take the community's message to Indonesia.

In October, she arrived in Jakarta. The first day of her visit coincided with the 53rd anniversary of the Indonesian armed forces and a denial by the Chief of the Armed forces, General Wiranto, that the alleged cases of rape had occurred.

"My frustration and disappointment was lessened by a rebuttal in the following day's media by the chairman of a fact-finding team.

"Its interim report had said that rapes had occurred, but the number of victims coming forward were unlikely to match the numbers claimed," she says.

"The responses from both the (Indonesian) Minister of Justice and the Minister of Women's Affairs were cautious.

"I expressed my disappointment with the Defence Minister's denial, and called for action to catch the offenders and restore confidence to the victims."

During her visit a second report from the North Aceh province claimed that during 10 years of military activity in the area, 600 women were widowed and more than 1000 children orphaned.

After meeting Government representatives and officials, including the Minister of Women's Affairs, Tutty Alawiyah, Pansy Wong visited Jakarta's Chinese district.

After being told by officials that Indonesia was one country and one people, the burnt homes and shops, most of them owned by Indonesian Chinese, told a different story.

"I met youngsters who did not look Chinese, and did not have Chinese names or any knowledge of Chinese culture or language.

"They were bewildered. They were Indonesians, so why were they being targeted?" she says. "Another man told me that he would fight to the death against the attackers."

Her meetings with members of the Chinese community also showed the depth of official sanctions against the Indonesian Chinese, who still carried official identification cards stamped 09 to identify them as a separate group.

During the Suharto era Chinese were discouraged from joining the army or the civil service, or becoming involved in politics, and even from using Chinese names. The only avenue left was commerce.

"Most of the Chinese were small retailers who worked long hours and became the target for envy," says Pansy Wong. "Their feelings emerged during our meetings: fear, frustration, and determination.

"I assured them that the international community outside Indonesia was with them, while as a New Zealander of Chinese origins, I conveyed my own support. I also reassured them that New Zealanders did not see all Indonesians as brutal racists," she says.