s a member of the Chinese-Indonesian minority group in the country, Sylvie Tanaga, 30, vividly remembers the anti-Chinese sentiment that arose during the May 1998 riots, which frightened her family to the point they made plans to flee their hometown of Bandung, West Java.
Even though Bandung saw less intens violence, provocative pamphlets circulated at the time, spreading hatred against ethnic Chinese in the city, said Sylvie, who was 11 year old at the time.
The term pribumi (indigenous people) was used to ignite hatred against Chinese-Indonesians, who were considered non-pribumi at the time, she said.
“Some people wrote, “this house is owned by a pribumi” on their houses to prevent the mobs from destroying them,” Sylvie told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.
Since the riots, which claimed 1,217 lives and left many traumatized owing to the violence, including reported rapes of Chinese-Indonesian women, the use of the term pribumi by government official was banned in 1998.
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The situation today may be less horrifying than in 1998 for Chinese-Indonesians, but many of them, like Sylvie, were taken aback when Jakarta Governor Anies Baswedan used the term in his inauguration speech, when he said that pribumi had been suppressed and defeated in the past, but after independence, it was time for them to be masters in their own country.
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