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thousand lanterns have been raised in Sudiroprajan and Pasar Gede in Surakarta (Solo), Central Java, to welcome the upcoming Lunar New Year, known in Indonesia as Imlek.

This year marks the fourth public observance of the holiday in the subdistricts, home to a large population of Chinese-Indonesian residents.

The public display of lanterns during Imlek carried a message about the end of local discrimination directed at Chinese-Indonesian residents, according to a local observer.

“This is apparently a symbol of revival for the ethnic Chinese community in Solo, because during the New Order government under [then president] Soeharto, Chinese temples, or klenteng, couldn’t do much of anything,” Aryanto Wong, Chinese cultural observer and spokesman of Tien Kok Sie temple, said on Wednesday.

Raising lanterns in 2007 marked the freedom of Chinese-Indonesian residents of Surakarta to celebrate Imlek, he added.

The lanterns were installed about one week before the Grebeg Sudiro ritual, which features the distribution of kue keranjang, or moon cakes, blessed at Tien Kok Sie temple, to local Javanese and Chinese-Indonesian residents in a gesture of communal solidarity.

Four thousand moon cakes are expected to be distributed this year, accompanied by a traditional reyog ponorogo troupe and a barongsai (lion dance) performance.

“The Grebeg Sudiro tradition only exists in Surakarta,” Aryanto said.

This year’s ritual will be held seven days before Imlek, which falls on Jan. 23.

Sumartono Hadinoto, a leading member of the Chinese-Indonesian community and also head of the Surakarta Community Association, said that discrimination against the Chinese-Indonesians in the city had ended in the past four years.

“After the reform era, post-New Order government and the passage of the Citizenship Law, there are only Indonesian citizens and foreign citizens, and with that, discrimination has been wiped out,” he said.

Chinese-Indonesians in Surakarta were prohibited from expressing themselves before 1998, Sumartono said, and were banned from public Imlek celebrations and even from speaking Chinese dialects.

The path for Chinese-Indonesians to celebrate imlek was cleared by two former presidents, Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid and Megawati Soekarnoputri.

In 2000, Gus Dur overturned the ban Imlek imposed by Soeharto, which was followed by a decree issued by Megawati’s making Imlek a national holiday in 2002.