Page 77 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

BEYOND ASIA: DECONSTRUCTING DIASPORA

to do or where to turn, was palpable. In the midst of the fear, despair and anger,
imaginary strategies to deal with the whole situation were thrown up which
signalled a desire to solve the problem once and for all – a desire for a ‘final solution’.
Some suggested organizing the exodus of all ethnic Chinese out of Indonesia to
whatever country would be prepared to take them in. Others proposed the creation
of a separate state for Indonesian Chinese, to create another ‘Singapore’ – a majority
overseas Chinese state. Some cast their hope on China to become the strongest
nation in the world, which, so it was implied, would gain respect for all Chinese
around the world. Still others indulged in blind revenge fantasies and wanted to
see Indonesia completely bankrupt. In such imagined futures, any connection with
‘Indonesia’, and the possibility of living together with non-Chinese Indonesians,
were given up. Even more moderate voices, those who still allowed some discursive
space for the prospect of co-existence, tended to reproduce and feed on the
dichotomy, as in this posting entitled ‘Decent pribumi should control those mobs
before they drive Indonesia deeper into ground’:

To those responsible pribumi and Indonesian politicians and pribumi
business people, you cannot afford to sit and wait for the current atrocities
against Chinese to blow over and expect Chinese will forget about it. This
time you are wrong. . . . The lack of positive and responsible actions in
Indonesia despite continual urging and cry for help from the victims will
only make the global Chinese communities more angry and united to
intensify the campaign.
(27 May 1998)
In response, one particularly angry participant flatly denied that there were any
‘decent pribumi’ in a posting entitled ‘Decent pribumi? Where are they?’:

I have yet to find ONE decent pribumi. If they are decent, they would have
stopped their blood brothers from killing Huarens. The fact that they
didn’t do so, after so many anti-Huaren pogroms, only shows that those
‘decent’ pribumis are as IN-decent as their parang welding cousins.
(27 May 1998)

Of course such strong language was not appreciated by everyone, and this particular
contributor, who called himself Chin, was urged by many others to ‘calm down’
in his outbursts of anger and hatred, only to be bullied back by Chin and others
that the Chinese should stop being so meek and finally be ready to fight back.
Whenever a more moderate contributor put forward that there were pribumi
Indonesians who have condemned the anti-Chinese riots, the retort would be: ‘So
what? They’re not to be trusted.’ There was an exasperated demand for action: ‘I’m
tired of all this talk. What are we going to DO?’ In the ongoing conversation, more
conciliatory calls for justice and respect for human rights were overshadowed by
the more extremist, emotive demands for retaliation and retribution. In the process,

66