Advertisement
What’s driving Indonesian paranoia over Chinese workers?
- The number of Chinese workers in Indonesia is tiny, yet they are often the target of fake news – as in the post-election riots that killed 8 people in Jakarta
- This distrust is rooted in history, culture and colonialism
Reading Time:6 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Rising paranoia about overseas Chinese workers in Indonesia suggests the ghosts of one of the most shameful episodes in the Southeast Asian nation’s history have never been laid to rest.
Advertisement
It may be more than 20 years since the racially charged riots of 1998 that led to the downfall of the dictator Suharto, but the anti-Chinese sentiment that drove that violence – in which more than a thousand people died and scores of women were raped – lingers.
Anyone who doubts that should consider the riot that hit Jakarta in May, when at least eight people died and hundreds were injured.
The violence erupted over a domestic issue, when supporters of the ex-special forces general Prabowo Subianto gathered to demonstrate against his loss to the incumbent president, Joko Widodo, in the April 17 election.
Advertisement
Yet within hours, fake news reports and media hoaxes had warped the story to channel anti-China sentiment, leaving Indonesia’s ethnic Chinese population, who make up about 3 million of the country’s 260 million people, fearing they could be in for a repeat of the mob violence of 1998.
Messages began circulating on social media claiming rioters killed in the melee had been shot by “police from China”. One hoax in particular, which contained a photo of fair-skinned, masked police officers, claimed “China has sent security forces to Indonesia disguised as foreign workers”.
Advertisement