Page 80 - On Not Speaking Chinese Living Between Asia and the West

INDONESIA ON MY MIND

call for justice, between the universalism of the cause, on the one hand, and the
explicitly Chinese signature of this electronic ‘Third Force’, on the other. Of course,
political mobilization to protest against human rights abuses is laudable, but
why should the basis of such mobilization be one of presumed ethnic sameness
with the victims? The immediacy of the Internet promoted a readiness to buy
into highly emotive evocations of victimization which work to disregard the
historical complexity and specificity of the situation within Indonesia, in favour of
a reductionist discourse of pan-ethnic solidarity cemented by an abstract, dehistori-
cized and absolutist sense of ‘Chineseness’. Here the idea of diaspora – Chinese
diaspora – enables the projection of a vast, dispersed, transnational, borderless,
technologically savvy yet ultimately bounded imagined community. This may
produce a strong sense of collective power, but it is in the nature of such ethnic
absolutist identity politics – founded as they are on the militant oppositioning
of self and other – that they evoke equally militant counter-identities by the other.
It was not surprising, therefore, that a ‘native Indonesian’ Internet mailing list
was soon launched by a Komite Gerakan Anti Cina di Indonesia (Anti-Chinese
movement in Indonesia), by its own description with the aim to be a ‘native
Indonesian’ antidote to the Huaren website. The logic of diaspora, in this context,
ironically reinforces the antagonism which the ‘Third Force’ was purported to fight
against!
But this violent antagonism is not only ideologically problematic and politically
counter-productive at the level of global politics. More importantly, it is practically
unlivable for those for whom separatism is simply not an option. A contributor
living in the city of Bandung, Mrk, wrote this cry from the heart when the rage was
spiralling to uncommon heights on the Huaren website:

OK, let’s just say all pribumi are bad, whether they’re educated or
uneducated, you’ve convinced me, they’re all evil, none of them are good,
none of them are trustworthy, they were born bad and they’ll die bad, they
don’t deserve anything. I hate all pribumi too. I’m on your side now, I’m
a true huaren-lover now, I’m not a pribumi lover annymore. There.
Happy? Now what should I do? Is my change of heart from neutralism to
hate going to save me? Strange, I don’t feel better. As a matter of fact I
feel worse now that I’ve suddenly realized that I’ve spent 13 years of my
life surrounded by crooks whom I thought were my friends and neigh-
bours. Tell me when I’m supposed to feel good about hating them, ok?
. . . And I DON’T KNOW what we huaren in Indonesia should do, sorry
again, I appreciate all the suggestions but PLEASE stop telling us huaren
who are inside to fight fight fight back, that’s impossible, we can’t fight
them, we can’t fight Rambo-style the way you want us to, sorry, and
PLEASE stop calling all pribumis bad, PLEASE stop trying to make all
of us in Indonesia hate all pribumi, it won’t make anything better, it can’t
fix anything, it’ll only make things worse.
(16 May 1998)

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