Madame Chairperson, Our country is now entering the new period. The new relatively democratic government is just building: National Unity Cabinet. Although there are still many conflicts amongst the cabinet members, this government at least has won the majority of the people. Many policies and necessary measures have been taken by the government to overcome the problems, in the spirit of reforms. In addition, the significant things are that the government is seriously trying to run the reform programs, in a gradual way. As examples, they are working on the elimination of the dual function of the army and on the elimination of KKN (Collusion, Corruption and Nepotism). However, in relation to racism, there have been no significant policies issued by the government in order to solve the problem. Many policies and measures have been taken by the government, but they still could not significantly eliminate the racism problems.
Racism in our country is going on in various spheres of life. It is very complicated and complex. In the legal matter, for example, there are still tens of laws and regulations that confine Chinese ethnic (Tionghoa) in economic, social, political and cultural life. One of the cases is Civil Regulation (Catatan Sipil). In the earlier (Dutch colonialism), Civil Registration was only for the Europeans (including equalized Indonesian people who have privileges). It regulates the birth, marriage, and divorce. There was no clear explanation about such limitation, nonetheless. Of course, it was in connection with racial interest.
Further, Civil Registration was developed with the closed rules of law, and seemed to be a part of government efforts to take control on Chinese ethnic (Tionghoa). For a Chinese ethnic, when he/she goes to the Civil Registration, he/she faces many problems. Firstly, the officials will directly know that she/he is Chinese ethnic although the physical style doesn't show it (with yellow skin and slanted eyes). Secondly, when the officials knows that she/he is Chinese ethnic, she/is facing another different regulations, such as Citizenship-certificate (Surat Bukti Kewarganegaraan Republik Indonesia), Birth certificate, etc. Citizenship-certificate is treated only for Chinese ethnic, not for other ethnics. Civil registration is one of the examples. It is the examples of racism in a vertical manner.
Racism in the horizontal manner, and the most dangerous one, are conflicts between ethnic and religious groups. These conflicts often tend to destruction and violence. Our country has many experiences of horizontal conflicts, such as, between ethnic Madura, Melayu and Dayak, which occurred in 1997-1998. The strife (war) between them brought about significant consequences, such as, killings, burning, destroying, and other violence actions. Tens of thousands of people have been suffering. Thousands of people were killed and injured, tens of thousands left their homes.
