Chinese Indonesians: Remembering, Distorting, Forgetting (review)

In the fertile field of Chinese Indonesian studies, the works of Charles A. Coppel have certainly been seminal. They highlight the problematic and often contested positions of the ethnic Chinese as an integral part of Indonesian society as well as the need to understand them holistically, through the study of their history, politics, legal status, religious practices and institutions, and literature, and taking into full account the repeated violence inflicted upon them in modern Indonesian history. As such, we welcome enthusiastically this festschrift published on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Melbourne, compiled by two scholars and close friends who have studied and worked with Coppel over the years. This book appropriately contains articles on various aspects of Chinese Indonesians written by his friends, colleagues and former students from Australia, Europe, Indonesia and Singapore, showing his deep influence in the field. It is an appropriate celebration of and accolade to his contributions not only to the study of Chinese Indonesians, but of Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and Asia more generally, and also to the study of ethnicity and identity politics.

The book begins with a piece by Coppel himself which serves as a useful, succinct introduction to the study of Chinese Indonesians. It is a modified version of an essay taken from the collection of writings, Studying Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia, edited by Leo Suryadinata, and published in the Singapore Society of Asian Studies, 2002. In it he traces his career in the study of Chinese Indonesians as a liminal group, yet always seeing them as part of Indonesian society, and fully understanding their problem of belonging in the adopted country. One can clearly see the development of his thinking relating to the plight of Chinese Indonesians over the decades up to and including the violent events of 1998 and after.

With the change of regimes in Indonesia in 1998 as the background, we are presented here with a short but insightful article by Arief Budiman, a longtime intellectual and activist in Indonesia and more recently a colleague of Coppel at Melbourne University, on the changes among Chinese Indonesians after the resignation of Suharto. Both the self-perceptions of ethnic Chinese and the perceptions of non-Chinese have changed, according to the author, and he, in typical fashion, is cautious about the future. This is probably a sobering reminder to the often euphoric Chinese activists, but one would have wished for more detailed comments on future scenarios from someone as knowledgeable as Budiman.

An article by Tim Lindsey, former student and later colleague of Coppel at Melbourne University, discusses changes in Indonesian laws pertaining to antidiscrimination after 1998. Lindsey shows how crucial changes have been made, particularly under the Wahid and Sukarnoputri regimes, but reminds the reader that many regulations still discriminate against the ethnic Chinese. In language often used by legal and human rights scholars or practitioners, he cautions that unless the Chinese go to court to challenge the State, the new legal provisions will not see enforcement but remain just words in the statute books. He further forewarns that the fight for equality will still be an uphill battle until persons of Chinese background are truly protected by Indonesian human rights legislation.

Also related to the changes in 1998 is an article on anti-Chinese violence in the transitional year 1998–99 by another former student of Coppel at Melbourne University, Jemma Purdey. Purdey adopts a framework used by Coppel to look at the transitional years 1965–67, and comes up with a thesis that violence may not be over, at least it was not up to 1999. While it is probably unfair to take her to task with regard to events after 1999, at least in the past six years or so no anti-Chinese violence has occurred, although similar violence has been inflicted on Christians, many of whom are Chinese. However, Purdey might be right in the long run, in view of the fact that there...