To most people in the Western World, not much known about Indonesia. People know Bali, or they would assume that Indonesia is a province of Bali (wrong). People would assume is that it’s mostly Muslim country and with that comes the Islamophobia.
Well, it is true that Indonesia has the biggest Muslim population on the planet, it is also true that majority of Indonesian are Muslims. However, a significant amount from the 4th country with most population believes in different other religions. Indonesia in general is much more secular than other Muslim countries and it is the most democratic compared to others.
One of the fun things I recalled was how we have holidays for each religion. This allows us to celebrate each other. My mom would decorate the house for each holiday accordingly, although we are Confucius/ Buddhists.
Typical Indonesian, mainly Chinese Indonesian also has a strong culture of being ‘kepo’ or nosy. We love to know other people’s affairs and personal matters, hoping we can help them with their matters. That’s why the hospitality industry loves Indonesian, and many Indonesian can be found in the hospitality industry around the world (also what makes people love Bali).
That being said, things are not perfect. Racism exists mainly between Native Indonesian and Chinese Indonesian. Frictions exist among Native Indonesian tribes. These exist primarily due to economic inequalities (similar to what the Jews are experiencing).
Here is one thing that I think it’s uniquely Indonesia, however. We do have a Buddhist temple that contains the remains of an Imam. And vice versa. Indonesia originally consisted of Hindu kingdoms; then, they turned into Buddhism. Later on, Islam took over. The West colonialized Indonesia and introduced Christianity. The Chinese merchants introduced Confucius.
These overlapping influences interestingly didn’t really overwrite each other, instead, they created layers of diversity. Or, what I can bluntly say, people have been taking the good parts of each religion and dumping the bad parts of them. At least till we got external radical influences where they re-introduced the bad parts again (hint: homophobia and transphobia).
The introduction of Islam and later on Christianity by the Dutch buried the gender liberalism that Indonesian culture had. Some tribes in Indonesia back then believed the existence of a third gender or androgynous gender.
The Dutch Colonialist was known to create division among people so they don’t unite and rebel. So when the founding fathers of Indonesia seek to be independent from the Dutch, they seek to unite the diversity. They put the motto of ‘Bhinekka Tunggal Ika’ as the nation slogan, sanskrit words that translates to ‘United in Diversity’.
New Regime
Moving forward to the 70s, the “New Regime” started. After the founding father of the country, Soekarno, led the country for more than a decade; Soeharto took over the country. Some conspiracy theories believed that the United States was behind this regime change due to fear of Soekarno’s lean towards Communist China. Whether this is true or not, one thing is clear, the racism towards Chinese Indonesian will grow for decades.
It was believed that many Chinese Indonesian was massacred during the “30 September Movement”, a holiday that has since been removed from the calendar in modern Indonesia.
During the New Regime period, a firm anti-communism policy was implemented. Chinese Indonesian are banned from having a Chinese name; they all have to adopt Indonesian names. Today, Chinese Indonesian use specific names that translate to the original Chinese family name. For example, a Huang (黄) would be Widjaja.
Anything that involved Chinese tradition was banned; we were banned from celebrating Lunar New Year, the Confucius religion was forbidden, and we were prohibited from learning Mandarin. Yet Chinese Indonesians secretly built Mandarin schools; we celebrate New Year privately. We adopted Buddhism and built Buddhist temples with Confucious pantheon in it. Something that even in China is common.
Since the early Indonesian time, Chinese Indonesian tend to be more wealthy than the rest of the nation. This is due to the reason that most of them settle in Indonesia as merchants. However, the wealth gap increased further as time progressed. The Peranakan, Chinese who immigrate to Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, have been keeping the “Only own people” mantra over generations. Which is somehow sounds like the right to discriminate.
My mother believes that the New Regime was economically better than the current Reformed Era. Government officials and people will discriminate against and give harsh treatment toward the Chinese Indonesians; however, at least we can bribe them.
As African Americans have a history of getting pullover by cops, so do Chinese Indonesians. During my time there, I have been pulled over so many times that I have probably spent $1,000 to bribe cops, that’s a significant amount considering you can have a good dinner for $2 in Indonesia.
Reformed Era
The Reformed Era started again with the blood of Chinese Indonesian. Over a financial crisis, a riot came out of nowhere on May 9, 1998, known as the May 1998 riot. The massacres in the past may sound worse than this, but this happened in my lifetime.
Over the racial tensions between native Indonesian and Chinese Asian, the natives sacked and burned any Chinese Indonesian business they could see. They would raid Chinese Indonesian residences, usually clustered in several neighborhoods. They would rape and burn the Chinese Indonesian women and torture the men to death.
Many Chinese Indonesians fled the country and never returned. Many marked their property with a sign that it was owned by the natives; this is done by getting friendly natives or bribing them. The horror of that day is landmarked by burned buildings or abandoned haunted-looking houses scattered throughout Jakarta.
The arrival of the Reformed Era, while costly for Chinese Indonesian, brought the winds of change. The leaders of the country started to embrace the existence of Chinese Indonesian. Chinese Indonesian were allowed back to celebrate Lunar New Year, learn Mandarin, and have Confucius as a religion. Later on they add Lunar New Year as national holiday and Confucius as the 6th official religion (In addition of Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Buddhism and Hindu).
Then the nation’s Constitution was reformed to allow a fully democratic system. No longer people vote only for party affiliations, in which decide how many people in the legislative and who the President is; the full democratic system requires office of the president and the two chambered legislative be elected by popular vote.
Chinese Indonesian were empowered to have political power by this change. We can now buy influence. Over time government officials embraced more towards the Chinese Indonesians. However, the people also demand corruption be removed from the government, a very tall order. This unfortunately led to the eventual lost of Chinese Indonesian influences and my Mom’s financial downfall.
LGBTQ+ in Indonesia
Earlier above, I mentioned that initially, the Indonesian civilization had a tolerant attitude towards LGBTQ+. And also about how that idea got wiped out thanks to the Dutch.
The existence of LGBTQ+ community in Indonesia has been pretty much underground. They are loved but also shamed. This attitude, however, has grown towards hate in the 21st Century.
Many people in my orbit said that it’s what the U.S. saw during the initial fight for gay rights. However, I feel the world’s geopolitics made the polarization worse. Just as the Dutch colonialized Indonesia and used hate to divide the nation, Middle East countries, China and Russia are playing roles to pull Indonesia from Western influences. They encouraged the doctrine that LGBTQ+ as something of Western influences. While it has been part of Indonesia but only was stigmatized by the Western states.
I hope Indonesia can see its own and differentiate between good and bad influences, not to say that Western countries sometimes can be pushy with their patronizing behaviors.