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In the 60s, there was a crazy massacre in Indonesia.
In peacetime, within a country, its own people brutally slaughter its own people, and the government turns a blind eye to the situation and even secretly supports this move.
Even the police and military who were supposed to maintain law and order joined the massacre.
Some 300,000 people lost their lives in this nearly two-year massacre, as for others injured, humiliated, looted of their property, etc.
To the sadness and anger of the Chinese people, the massacre targeted all Chinese in Indonesia. This was the 1965-1967 Chinese exclusion massacre in Indonesia that shocked the world.
In fact, before this massacre, Indonesia's exclusion and killing of Chinese had never stopped. What kind of existence are the Chinese in Indonesia, and why does Indonesia hate the Chinese so much?
Indonesia's two major Chinese exclusions began and ended
Indonesia's exclusion of the Chinese may have not stopped since the day the Chinese landed on Indonesian soil.
However, in history, Indonesia expelled the Chinese on the largest scale, and the most serious damage to the Chinese were the Indonesian Chinese exclusion massacre from 1965 to 1967 and the Indonesian Chinese exclusion incident in 1998.
In September 1965, officers of the Indonesian Presidential Guard staged a coup d'état and killed six key Indonesian generals, which was eventually suppressed by the Indonesian army.
At that time, the actual controller of the Indonesian military group was called Suharto, and after the successful coup d'état, he seized the military power in Indonesia under the pretext of purging the political ranks and declaring that it was necessary to suppress the insurgency.
After that, public opinion turned to the side of Suharto, and then Suharto put President Suharno under house arrest, and then smoothly pushed Suharno to establish his own ruling group.
At that time, the world was under a bipolar pattern of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union, and former President Suharno had always been pro-Soviet.
Suharto was more pro-American, and after he took office, in order to curry favor with the United States and to transfer contradictions, he announced that he would eliminate the Indonesian Communist Party, which supported Suharno.
China is a socialist country that has helped the PKI before, and many local Chinese in Indonesia have also joined the PKI.
Coupled with the Suharto government's intention to guide public opinion, China was behind the coup, so the campaign to eradicate the Indian Communist Party finally turned into an action against the Chinese.
Indonesians, already hostile to the local Chinese, had a justified excuse to carry out an indiscriminate and brutal massacre of the Chinese Indonesians, which lasted for two years.
The Indonesians did not need any reason for the massacre of the Chinese, and they could swing knives at the Chinese whenever they wanted.
They killed the Chinese, insulted their wives and daughters, and finally killed them, robbed the Chinese property, set fire to the Chinese houses.
After doing all this, they will not have to pay any price for it, and they will even be considered "heroes" by Indonesians.
During 1965, Indonesia's Chinese exclusion operations only stayed at the civilian level, mainly the robbery and massacre of Chinese by Indonesian indigenous peoples, and by 1966, after the development of Chinese exclusion operations in the middle of the period, the Indonesian government also joined the Chinese exclusion operations.
The Indonesian government has issued relevant decrees to eliminate Chinese legally and institutionally, and Indonesia's military and police openly join the Chinese exclusion operation.
They expelled Chinese diplomats and journalists working in Indonesia, attacked the Chinese embassy, and attacked all Chinese communities and schools.
The Indonesian government's anti-Chinese behavior seriously damaged relations between China and Indonesia, and on October 30, 1967, China and Indonesia formally severed diplomatic relations.
It is difficult to count the loss of life and economy suffered by the Chinese in this anti-Chinese incident, and the figures on overseas Chinese casualties have not been accurately counted.
But a 1966 report in the Far Eastern Economic Review and Life magazine claimed that hundreds of thousands of Chinese had been killed in the campaign.
Indonesia's second large-scale Chinese exclusion was the 1998 Chinese exclusion incident, also known as the "Black May Riots." Although the scale of this Chinese exclusion incident is not as large as that of 1965, the impact of this Chinese exclusion incident is greater and more far-reaching.
In 1997, a financial crisis swept across Asia, undoing Indonesia's nearly 30 years of economic gains.
The sharp decline in the economic level has caused the Indonesian people to be dissatisfied and angry, and the Suharto government, as the ruler, has an unshirkable responsibility.
But the Suharto government apparently did not want to admit its mistakes, and instead played the same thing as it did thirty years ago, transferring the contradiction to the local Chinese community and once again stimulating the local ethnic contradiction.
Indonesians' anger needs an outlet, and since discrimination and prejudice against the local Chinese have a long history, it is obviously easier to turn the gun on the Chinese.
Between May 13 and 15, 1998, serious riots broke out in Jakarta, the largest number of Chinese in Indonesia.
Thousands of Indonesian thugs gathered to break into the Chinese gathering area, burned and looted, and the local office buildings, shops, residential buildings, etc. in the area were damaged, and tens of thousands of Indonesian Chinese were displaced.
During this period, more than 1,200 Indonesian Chinese died as a result of the riots, countless Chinese were injured, and countless Chinese women were devastated and defiled.
And there is a lot of evidence that the riots were organized, and many of them were military.
Somewhere in Jakarta, for example, a Chinese woman on the same street was raped at almost the same time. This further shows the Indonesian government's attitude towards the Chinese.
Causes of Chinese exclusion in Indonesia
Indonesia is a multi-ethnic country, and it is not uncommon for contradictions between ethnic groups to arise in a multi-ethnic country. But why is Indonesia so united in rejecting the Chinese?
In fact, Indonesia's exclusion of the Chinese has a long history.
Economic factors are the main reason for Indonesian Chinese exclusion, historical and cultural factors have caused the Indonesian indigenous peoples to naturally discriminate against Chinese, and political factors are behind many Chinese exclusion incidents.
According to relevant statistics, the number of Indonesian Chinese has reached more than 20 million, accounting for 5% of Indonesia's total population, and Indonesia is the country with the largest number of overseas Chinese.
Almost all Chinese who go to Indonesia have the same goal: the economy.
If not for more wealth, who would want to leave their homeland to go to a country with a different language and culture? Therefore, almost all Chinese in Indonesia are engaged in business, and the economic conditions are relatively good.
On the other hand, the local Indonesians, they do not have the Chinese ability to do business, and they are jealous but helpless when they see a large amount of wealth falling into the pockets of the Chinese.
Therefore, whenever Indonesia's economy has problems or social order is turbulent, it provides Indonesians with an excuse to plunder the Chinese, and they can use this to vent their anger and gain wealth, so the Indonesians always launch an exclusion campaign against the Chinese.
From a historical and cultural point of view, when the Dutch colonized Indonesia, many Chinese helped the Dutch manage the Indonesians, which buried hidden contradictions between the two peoples. Most Chinese Indonesians do not identify themselves as Indonesians, which further intensifies the contradictions.
Exchanges between China and Indonesia have a long history, dating back to the Tang Dynasty.
At the beginning, the exchanges between China and Indonesia only stayed at the level of commercial exchanges, and the scale was not large, until the Ming and Qing dynasties, a large number of Hakka people on the southeast coast of China "went to Nanyang" to Indonesia, which laid the foundation for a large number of Indonesian Chinese.
In the 16th century, the Dutch colonized Indonesia, and there were already some Chinese to make a living in Indonesia.
After the Dutch occupied Indonesia, in order to better rule the Indonesian people, they chose some Chinese who made a living in Indonesia to manage these Indonesian locals.
First, the Dutch believe that Chinese are smarter and more managerial; Second, Chinese do not have a strong sense of belonging to Indonesia, and naturally prefer to help provide them with more benefits to the Netherlands.
Therefore, during the period when Indonesia was colonized by the Dutch, the Chinese enjoyed almost the same status as the Dutch in Indonesia, and also controlled many local economic industries. This not only laid the foundation for the later Chinese to obtain wealth in Indonesia, but also buried the hidden danger of Indonesia crowding out the Chinese.
In addition, although a large number of Chinese have immigrated to Indonesia since the Ming and Qing dynasties, until today, Indonesian Chinese have not fully integrated into Indonesians.
A significant portion of the Chinese Indonesian community still insists on being Chinese, while others identify more with Western culture and do not see themselves as Indonesian.
Due to historical factors and cultural identity, Chinese Indonesians and Indonesians have been unable to integrate for hundreds of years, which has led to the contradiction between the two.
Finally, political factors are also one of the important reasons for Indonesia's Chinese exclusion.
Just like the two Great Chinese Exclusion incidents we introduced earlier, the trigger for these two incidents was that the rulers wanted to pass on the crisis, and as a result, the Chinese became scapegoats.
And in Indonesia, although the Chinese are economically powerful, they do not have a place in politics.
Therefore, every time a Chinese exclusion incident occurs, Indonesian Chinese can only watch themselves being bullied and are powerless to resist, and have nowhere to seek justice, because the ruler will not favor any Chinese.
The combination of economic, historical, cultural and political factors has led to the frequent occurrence of Chinese exclusion incidents in Indonesia.
So, since the Chinese have suffered so much unfair treatment in Indonesia, why do these Chinese insist on staying in Indonesia and not returning home?
Why don't Indonesian Chinese return to China?
In fact, in the face of the tragic consequences of repeated Chinese exclusion incidents, many Indonesian Chinese have not thought about leaving, but many people can no longer leave Indonesia and cannot return to China.
The first large-scale migration of Chinese to Indonesia was during the Dutch colonization of Indonesia. Affected by geographical relations, most of the Indonesian Chinese are from southern coastal cities such as Guangdong and Fujian.
These coastal cities had a strong sense of clan, so at that time, the Chinese in the past only used Indonesia as a means of making a living, and they eventually wanted to return to China.
But by the mid-18th century, the Qing government's attitude toward the Chinese in Indonesia had changed.
The Qianlong Emperor believed that these immigrants would pose a threat to China when they returned to China after staying abroad for a long time, which was also at the stage of China's isolation, so although there was no explicit prohibition on Indonesian Chinese returning to China, in fact they were excluded.
At this stage, many Chinese who came to Indonesia to make a living did not return to China, but stayed in the local area to start a family, and their descendants were not pure Chinese.
After a few generations, the emotional connection between Chinese Indonesians and China will weaken, and future generations will not be able to return to China.
In modern times, Chinese mainland turmoil, ordinary people who had no way out had to flee to make a living, and at this time Indonesia ushered in a new batch of Chinese immigrants.
Unlike the Chinese before them, this group of post-immigrants firmly considers themselves Chinese.
They look down on the Chinese who consider themselves Indonesian or Dutch, actively participate in the liberation struggle at home, and have maintained close ties with China.
After Indonesia's independence, the nascent Indonesian regime began to exclude Chinese Indonesians. They did not allow the Chinese to participate in political decision-making, deprived the Chinese of their property for no reason, and even fabricated various reasons to "cleanse" the Chinese.
These actions forced many Chinese at the time to leave Indonesia and return to China's southeast coast or Taiwan.
However, because they have been away from home for too long, the Chinese Indonesians cannot be treated completely as Chinese in China, which puts the Chinese Indonesians in an awkward dilemma.
Moreover, between 1967 and 1990, China and Indonesia broke off diplomatic relations, making it even more difficult for Indonesian Chinese to return to China.
Most of these Chinese who wanted to leave Indonesia ended up going to other countries in Southeast Asia, such as Singapore, and some went to countries such as Canada.
In any case, although some of these Indonesian Chinese have lost their Chinese nationality, and some cannot return to China for various reasons, after all, they are all descendants of our same ethnic group, and we are naturally angry when we see them being bullied overseas.
So Indonesia has repeatedly excluded and bullied the Chinese, is there really no one to punish them? In fact, Indonesia's retribution for persecuting the Chinese has already arrived.
After the outbreak of the Indonesian Chinese exclusion incident in 1998, more and more Chinese realized that the safety of their lives and property in Indonesia could not be guaranteed, and they left Indonesia to settle in other countries.
And these people are precisely the richest part of Indonesia, who have taken away a lot of wealth and hit the Indonesian economy hard.
After seeing Indonesia's behavior, other countries naturally do not think that Indonesia is a good investment environment, so even if the Chinese withdraw from the Indonesian economic market, other capital is not willing to invest in Indonesia.
The Chinese exclusion incident in '98 also caused great turmoil in Indonesian politics and society. With the fall of the Suharto government, social order in chaos, and severe economic damage, Indonesia once fell into a state of "desperate country".
Until now, Indonesia has not fully emerged from this depression.
Moreover, now our country is getting stronger and stronger, whether it is Chinese or overseas Chinese, they can feel the sense of security brought by the strength of their own nation, no matter where they are, they have always had the motherland as a strong backing.
Even if the attitude of the Indonesian people towards the Chinese has not completely changed, the Indonesian government does not dare to treat the Chinese unequally as before.