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The elephant in the room: Racism in Indonesia
While laws against discrimination exist in Indonesia, civil rights lawyers say that the state is primarily responsible for perpetuating racism against Papuans.
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A police officer leads a woman affected by tear gas away from a street demonstration on Wednesday in Mimika, Papua. Public protests erupted in several cities in Papua and West Papua from Aug. 19-21 to protest the allegedly racially motivated response of security personnel against Papuan students on Friday in Surabaya, East Java. (Antara/Sevianto Pakiding)
F
ueled by a viral video that appeared to show alleged security personnel using the derogatory slur “monkey” against Papuan students in Surabaya, East Java, the longstanding racial prejudice against residents of Papua and West Papua boiled over during recent tensions in the two least developed provinces in the country.
The 2010 census conducted by Statistics Indonesia (BPS) found that the country had 1,340 etnicities, with the Javanese formingthe majority at about 40 percent and Papuans comprising only 1.14 percent. Soeharto’s New Order repressed sectarian tensions, including anti-Chinese and anti-Islam sentiments, by banning individuals from public expression of tribal affiliations, religion, race and societal groups (SARA).
Enacted during the New Order, Article 156 of the Criminal Code bans all SARA-based prejudice and carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Two additional laws were later issued – Law No. 40/2008 on eliminating racial and ethnic discrimination and Law No. 19/2016 on Electronic Information and Transactions (ITE) – to protect citizens from all discrimination based on their religion, ethnicity and race and to ban hate speech on the internet.
President Joko Widodo has instructed National Police chief Gen.Tito Karnavian to take legal action against acts of racial and ethnic discrimination in the Surabaya case. While the country has seen many religious conflicts, it has often overlooked racially motivated public tension and conflicts.
Has anyone been convicted of SARA?
The Tanjungpinang Police of Riau named on Thursday Bobby Jayanto, the chairman of the NasDem Party's Tanjungpinang chapter, as a suspect of "racist" speech following a nearly two-month investigation.
Bobby, who is of Chinese descent and a leader of the local Chinese-Indonesian community, reportedly used "black skin" to refer to non-Chinese-Indonesians in a public speech, and has been accused of violating the Criminal Code and Article 16 of the 2008 Anti-discrimination Law.
