12 Agenda
Ethnic Chinese are caught in a cycle of poverty and discrimination, Hera Diani reports
Home is where the heart is for
Indonesia’s stateless community
P
erched on a riverbank
in West Java, the 500 sq
ft house doesn’t have
an indoor bathroom.
But for Lim Ok Nio, her
husband Tjo Siu Tjong
and their 11 children,
it’s home – cement
floor, dried sago palm
roof and all. Maybe not
for much longer, however.
The local government is planning to
evict the family and several hundred of
their neighbours who officials say are
illegally squatting on state land. Most of
them are poor Chinese-Indonesians,
descendents of labourers shipped to
Indonesia by its Dutch colonial
administration in the 18th and 19th
centuries.
“I’ve lived here for 30 years. I don’t
know of any place else to go to. And we are
poor. My husband and a few of my
children who have already started working
are only doing menial jobs,” said Lim, 52.
Lim’s son-in-law, Harman, who
married her eldest daughter Meylan and
lives next door, said the majority of
residents have lived in the area for
generations. Many bear little physical
resemblance to their Chinese ancestors,
their deeply tanned skin and rounded eyes
making them look like indigenous
Indonesians, who make up more than 90
per cent of the population.
But that still hasn’t stopped the
harassment, which remains a continual
problem at the local level despite the
repeal of discriminatory national laws
against Chinese-Indonesians more than a
decade ago.
“During elections, we are really taken
advantage of, and we are forced to vote for
certain local leaders,” Harman said, after
initially being reluctant to talk.
Lim and Tjo even have problems in
getting national identification cards, which
prevents them from getting marriage
certificates and other legal documents.
“We applied for ID cards and family cards
again, but it has been 18 months and we
haven’t got them yet, although we asked
repeatedly,” Lim said, looking deeply
troubled.
Identification cards cost 30,000 rupiah
(HK$25), which is a day’s pay for a
labourer. And corrupt local officials can
demand up to five times the going rate for
such documents.
Such is life for this seemingly forgotten
group of tens of thousands of Indonesian
descendents of Chinese who don’t have
citizenship and are basically stateless.
Their plight is a sad chapter in
contemporary Indonesian history dating
to 1955, when Indonesia and China signed
an agreement that allowed Chinese people
in Indonesia to hold dual citizenship.
In 1959, both countries agreed to a
repatriation process for 140,000 Chinese
who chose to return to the mainland.
However, in 1965, Jakarta accused Beijing
of supporting an aborted coup blamed on
The quest to have a Chinese voice in the British Parliament
......................................................
Kelvin Chan
Hong Kong-born George Lee is one of a
record number of eight Chinese people
competing for seats in Thursday’s British
general elections.
Winning a seat would provide
Parliament with its first Chinese MP.
Others hoping for a place in the House
of Commons are Anna Lo, Wu Kegang,
Merlene Toh Emerson, Philip Ling, Alex
Lee Payton, Allan Siao Ming Witherick and
Stephen Shing.
Lee, 48, a Conservative Party
candidate, helped by a small band of
volunteers, has been on the campaign trail
canvassing shopkeepers in north London
as the election looms.
Hoping to persuade Tufnell Park shop
owners to vote Tory because the party is
supporting small businesses, he asked
whether he could put up posters in their
shop windows.
It “would be a breakthrough for the
Chinese community because it would be
the first time they would have a role model
and have a voice in British politics,” Lee
said. “But it would also be a breakthrough
for Britain because there would be more
understanding of the needs of the third-
largest minority community in this
country.”
Britain’s Chinese community,
estimated at more than 400,000, is the
country’s fastest-growing minority group.
But with only a smattering of local
councillors, it has no significant political
representation.
In the last election, in 2005, neither
Labour nor the Conservatives fielded
Chinese candidates, although the Liberal
Democrats put up three.
Chinese people have tended to stay out
of politics in the past with many opting to
run businesses such as takeaway
restaurants across the country. Chinese
people, too, live in many parts of the
country and have not been able to form a
powerful voting bloc because of this.
the Indonesian Communist Party.
Diplomatic ties with China were frozen,
abruptly halting the repatriation process
and leaving 100,000 people stranded.
Most of those people and their children
remain either stateless or are considered
foreign nationals in the country of their
birth. Indonesia’s Ministry of Justice and
Human Rights has estimated there are tens
of thousands of stateless people in
Tangerang, a district of West Java’s Banten
province, bordering the capital.
“There have been a few naturalisation
processes since the 1980s, but they only
reached a few thousands people, as the
announcements about it were not spread
properly,” said Eddy Setiawan, co-
ordinator of the Indonesia Civics Institute,
an NGO. Funded by a group of Chinese-
Indonesian businessmen, it has helped
3,564 people get Indonesian citizenship
confirmation letters, while 105 more are
being processed.
Setiawan said Indonesia’s stateless are
caught in a vicious cycle of inherited
discriminatory regulations, public
ignorance and local government
corruption. “Those people are culturally
Indonesian, and based on existing laws, as
long as they are born and live in the
I’m so desperate … I don’t
want to be a Chinese
citizen. I was born here
in Indonesia; I’ve lived
here all my life
...............................................................
Yauw Boen Tji, who has waited 20 years for
his citizenship application to be approved
country and do not hold other citizenship,
then they are Indonesian citizens. So why
do they have to obtain citizenship
certificates?” he said.
The issue was inherited from
Indonesia’s Dutch colonisers, who divided
society into three groups: non-Christian
indigenous people, Christians and
Chinese. The policy was continued under
the late Indonesian dictator Suharto, who
was president from 1966 to 1998.
Even after former president
Abdurrahman Wahid lifted bans on public
celebrations of Lunar New Year and
Chinese-language newspapers, among
other restrictions, the notion that Chinese-
Indonesians are somehow not equal
remains entrenched, especially among
grass-roots society. As a result, poor
Chinese-Indonesians are regular targets of
discrimination and extortion.
Setiawan said applying for a citizenship
document is a bureaucratic nightmare,
with applicants needing letters of
confirmation from their neighbourhood
unit, a succession of local government
offices up to the minister of justice and
human rights, and their local court and the
police. It’s an open secret that navigating
George Lee, Conservative Party candidate
Merlene Toh Emerson, LibDem candidate
Wu Kegang, Conservative Party candidate
through each level of the bureaucracy
requires paying a bribe.
“Many … are poor. The bureaucracy
and extortion then makes them reluctant
to try to obtain documents. But as a result,
they can only work in the informal sector.
They are also in constant fear of being
arrested, which forces them to move a lot
and hide,” Setiawan said.
He noted that the government has
issued regulations on eradicating
discrimination based on race and
ethnicity, as well as policies making it
easier for stateless people to obtain
citizenship papers. But lower-level
government offices, empowered by
Indonesia’s regional autonomy system,
have kept bureaucratic obstacles firmly in
place.
Setiawan said his organisation has
discussed the issue with the Chinese
embassy, but diplomats said they can only
help those holding Chinese passports.
Yauw Boen Tji, 48, has known the bitter
taste of bureaucracy for the past 20 years
while waiting in vain for his citizenship
application to be approved. He finally
concluded that the system was
propagated by government officials to
enrich themselves.
His parents arrived in Surabaya, East
Java, in the 1950s and never left, but
right up to when they died a few years
ago, their status had only changed
from stateless people to foreign
nationals. He’s also considered a
foreign national, meaning he has
to obtain a visa and permit to
work in the country of his birth.
“My birth certificate stated
that I am of foreign citizen
descent and my ID card
states that I am a foreign
citizen,” said Yauw, who
works at a church in
Jakarta. Since the 1980s,
he’s continually applied
for Indonesian
citizenship to no avail.
He obtained a passport
in 1989, as he had to
attend a church
seminar in
a Ho
ngel
on: A
trati
Illus
About 30 per cent of Chinese people
eligible to vote have not registered,
according to an Electoral Commission
report in 2005. That is second only to black
African citizens with 37 per cent. The non-
registration rate for white people is 6 per
cent and 17 per cent for ethnic minorities
as a whole.
In the past it was proposed making it
much harder for restaurant owners to
employ skilled workers by imposing
English-language requirements and
subjecting owners to criminal penalties if
they hired illegal immigrants.
Things also began to change in 2007
when Lo made headlines after being voted
into the Northern Ireland Assembly as a
representative for the cross-community
Alliance party in South Belfast, becoming
the first Chinese person to be elected to a
legislature in Europe.
This time, 59-year-old Lo is running for
a parliamentary seat in the same
constituency. Sweeping changes are
expected in the elections. As many as 350
new candidates could find seats in
Westminster, more than half the total
number available, say analysts.
They believe that voters have become
fed up by the MPs expenses scandal that
erupted last year and prompted some MPs
not to run again. Others tarnished their
reputations with unacceptable expenses
claims.
In Liverpool, mainland-born Wu, 48, is
joining Lee on a Conservative ticket.
Originally from Guangdong province, he
came to Britain in 1991 to get his PhD and
stayed, working first as a university
lecturer and then in Liverpool’s chamber
of commerce. Wu said his main reason for
running for a seat was because he wanted
to help Britain recover from the financial
crisis that it has been caught up in. But he
also wanted to serve as an example to
other people in the Chinese community.
“In some cases there’s a fear to politics;
they seem to think politics will bite,” he
said.
Because of this, many Chinese people
had been marginalised and found
themselves on the political sidelines over
the years.
He hopes “the fact that I’m standing as
the very first Chinese mainland-born
candidate might have some impact on the
Chinese community”.
“If my participation can encourage a
few more people to vote or stand in future
it will only be a good thing for the
mainstream and Chinese community to
work together,” he said.
The Liberal Democrats have the largest
contingent of Chinese candidates with
four – Emerson, 49, a Singaporean-born
corporate lawyer, and three British-born
candidates with Chinese parents, Ling, 29,
Payton, 36, and Witherick, 31. Ling, Payton
and Witherick are a generation younger
than their peers, in their late twenties to
mid-thirties. Emerson said they represent
a generation of British-born Chinese
coming of age in political life.
“It’s partly because the demographics
have changed,” she said. “Before, a lot of
first-generation Chinese weren’t
interested in going into politics. “This time
around three of my colleagues are British-
born and they feel very British. Politics is
what they’re interested in.
“They’re not standing as Chinese
candidates, they’re merely political
candidates who happen to have a Chinese
background.”
Indeed, Ling, Payton and Witherick all
said they wanted to run because they
hoped to make a difference or had
enjoyed their previous political
experiences. None of them said their
ethnicity was a big deal to voters they had
talked to.
“To non-Chinese voters my ethnicity is
not really an issue, which is a good thing,”
said Ling, who works at a bank and whose
parents immigrated from Hong Kong.
Witherick, a local government
councillor, and Payton, a barrister, both
have Chinese mothers who came to work
The fact that I’m standing
as the very first Chinese
mainland-born candidate
might have some impact
on the community
...............................................................
Wu Kegang, who left Guangdong to
study in Britain in 1991 and stayed
in Britain. Witherick’s mother is from
Malaysia, Payton’s from Singapore.
Rounding out the group is Hong Kong-
born Shing, 55, who is running for a seat as
an independent in Eastbourne on the
southeastern English coast.
Shing moved to the area in 1972, runs a
takeaway restaurant and is already a local
councillor, as are his wife and son. Back in
London, Lee was working hard to
overcome the initial frosty receptions he
received from the shop owners, many of
whom are, like him, immigrants. An
elderly Cypriot couple running a sewing
machine shop asked him what he would
do about Cyprus.
“A negotiated solution is the answer,”
he replied.
A Turkish woman working in a greasy
spoon diner took him out to the street to
The Candidates
George Lee, 48,
Conservative candidate in
Holborn and St Pancras,
London
Wu Kegang, 48,
Conservative candidate in
Liverpool Riverside
Merlene Toh Emerson, 49,
Liberal Democrat candidate
SUNDAY, MAY 2, 2010 SUNDAY MORNING POST
Singapore, with the word “stateless” in
capital letters denoting his nationality.
“Singaporean immigration let me into
the country, but when I used the passport
again to go to Malaysia, I was denied
entry,” Yauw said. He said four of his
siblings who applied with him received
citizenship papers, but for unknown
reasons, he and another sibling did not.
When Indonesia and China restored
diplomatic relations in 1990 after 23 years,
Yauw obtained a Chinese passport
because he had to attend other church
conferences abroad. He tried other
avenues, both legal and illegal, to get his
Indonesian citizenship confirmation
letter, spending hundreds of dollars,
but remains a foreign citizen.
Until a few years ago,
Indonesia applied the jus
sanguinis principle, in
which a child’s
citizenship followed that
of their father. Because
Yauw didn’t want his children
to also be considered foreigners in
Indonesia, he didn’t register his
marriage. His three children’s birth
certificates are marked “Children
born out of the wedlock”.
“I’m so desperate. I get really
emotional when people ask about my
citizenship status. I don’t want to be
a Chinese citizen. I was born here
in Indonesia; I’ve lived here all my
life. I don’t have any connection
with my relatives in China any
more,” he said, eyes glistening
with tears.
Every time he reads about
a new government policy
concerning stateless and
foreign citizens, he inquires
about it through his local
government office, but is
usually told that the guidelines
don’t exist yet.
Azhari Syihabudin, former
head of the Ministry of Justice
and Human Rights’ citizenship
sub-directorate, claimed it’s not
difficult to obtain a citizenship
confirmation letter.
“The bureaucracy has been cut short.
All you have to do is apply to a local civil
registry and population office. As long as
he does not have a foreign passport, I think
it would be easy,” he said.
But Haidir Amin Daud, the ministry’s
director general of legal administration,
admitted that obtaining or changing
citizenship was a bottom-up process. “We
issue citizenship confirmation letters if
there is a request from a local
administration office, as the party that
holds applicants’ data,” he said.
Regarding the troubles of many people
in facing the bureaucracy in local offices, or
even obtaining ID cards, he curtly replied:
“We’ll look for the solution.”
After nearly 50 years, Indonesia’s
stateless ethnic Chinese continue to wait
for that solution.
complain about strict parking regulations.
He listened intently, and tried to break the
ice by telling her he spent three years
working in Germany, where there is a big
Turkish population. At the Eatzone
Noodle House, he explained the
Conservative party and its policies to the
Malaysian-Chinese owner in a mixture of
Cantonese and English.
Across the street at the Sun Hing
takeout restaurant, the owners were glad
to see him, pointing to a newspaper
clipping of him they had already posted
on the wall.
“I think public service is in my blood,”
said Lee, who came to Britain as a nine-
year-old in 1971 and began his career
working at the Ministry of Defence before
moving on to London’s Metropolitan
Police and then the corporate sector. “I
wanted to serve and it just so happens I
was asked by the Conservative party” to
run.
Whatever happens on election day,
Christine Lee, a lawyer and founder of the
British Chinese Project, who is not a
candidate, said the candidates would gain
invaluable campaign experience.
“Whether they get in or not is not the
most important thing, the most important
is the participation, that they actually
come out and be the candidate for the
election,” she said. “For their own
experiences, they need to go through this.”
in Hammersmith and Alexander Lee Payton, 36,
Fulham, London Liberal Democrat candidate
Philip Ling, 29, Liberal in Havant, Hampshire
Democrat candidate in Anna Lo, 59, Alliance Party of
Bromsgrove, Birmingham Northern Ireland’s candidate
Allan Siao Ming Witherick, in South Belfast
31, Liberal Democrat Stephen Shing, 55,
candidate in Broxbourne, independent candidate in
Hertfordshire Eastbourne, East Sussex