(Indonesia has a history of anti Chinese pogroms. The cleansing of the Communists back in forty or so years ago turned into ageneral massacre of Chinese throughout the islands to some extent but most severe in Java and Sumatra.
Yes. What you said is true. In many countries, it is always the well of minorities who are the target of anger when opportunists want to create chaos.
Human Rights Watch believes the current hoaxes were created to target ethnic Chinese citizens and businesses in Indonesia.
These groups, including the losing candidate, Prabowo and many of his advisers, have a dark reputation of using ethnic and religious sentiment, including anti-Chinese racism, in mobilising people to get power.
They did it in Java in 1998 with the anti-Chinese riots and they are trying to do it again today.
Although it is not that easy to provoke anti-Chinese sentiment in some other parts of Indonesia, it works in Jakarta. The root of the problem is that Indonesia has centuries of racism, discrimination against ethnic Chinese, starting since the Dutch period with the 1740 Batavia massacres. It happened again on a wide scale in 1945-46, in 1965-68, and in 1998.
I think that massacre was in 1965. So that would be 54 years ago.
Wasn’t there a Mel Gibson movie that takes place in Indonesia at that time - “Year of Living Dangerously”.
Do I remember that right?
The history of Indonesian hatred of Chinese dates back to the Mongol invasion of Java in 1293 AD. The ruler, Kertanagara, and his son-in-law, Raden Wijaya, soundedly defeated the invading forces, humiliated them, and sent them back with their tails between their legs.
[Indonesia has a history of anti Chinese pogroms. The cleansing of the Communists back in forty or so years ago turned into ageneral massacre of Chinese throughout the islands to some extent but most severe in Java and Sumatra.]
It’s more a tendency that seizes Muslims, from time to time, to go amuck against the unbelievers in their midst. In the 60’s, these were heterodox Muslims:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_1965%E2%80%9366#Religious_and_ethnic_factors
[Islam in Java was divided between Abangan, who mixed Islam with other religions like Hinduism and native religious practices, and the Santri, who followed standard orthodox Islam. Many Abangans were supporters of the Communist Party,[79][80][81] and their interests were thus supported by the PKI.[82] They subsequently made up most of the people who were slaughtered in the killings.[83][84] Abangans were targeted for attacks by Ansor, the youth wing of Nahdlatul Ulama and the Santri with help from the Indonesian army.[85][86] To avoid being classified as atheist and communists, Abangan Muslims were forced by the Indonesian government to convert to Hinduism and Christianity in the aftermath of the slaughter.[87][88][89][90]
In Sumatra, youths massacred Javanese plantation labourers who made up the membership of the PKI in the province of North Sumatra.[91]
The targeting of ethnic Chinese played an important role in the killings in Sumatra and Kalimantan, which have been called genocide. Charles A. Coppel is sharply critical of this characterisation, in which he sees a western media and academics unwilling to face the consequences of an anti-communist agenda that they endorsed,[92] instead scapegoating Indonesian racism and indulging in extravagant and false claims of hundreds of thousands or millions of Chinese killed.[93] Charles Coppel wrote of the distorted coverage in an article titled: “A genocide that never was: explaining the myth of anti-Chinese massacres in Indonesia, 1965–66”. Coppel sees the same bias in coverage of the May 1998 riots, where the Volunteer Team for Humanity noted non-Chinese looters made up the majority of those who were killed.[94] His thesis continues to inspire debate.[95]
An estimate is that around 2,000 Chinese Indonesians were killed (out of a total estimated death toll of between 400,000 and 3 million people), with documented massacres taking place in Makassar and Medan and on the island of Lombok.[96] Robert Cribb and Charles A. Coppel noted that “relatively few” Chinese were actually killed during the purge while the majority of the dead were native Indonesians.[97] The death toll of Chinese was in the thousands while the death toll of native Indonesians was in the hundreds of thousands. Balinese and Javanese made up the majority of people who were massacred.[93]
Indigenous, non-Muslim, pagan Dayaks expelled 45,000 ethnic Chinese from rural areas, killing 2,000–5,000.[52] The Chinese refused to fight back, since they considered themselves “a guest on other people’s land” with the intention of trading only.[77][98] ]
It also occurred against the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks in the waning days of the Ottoman empire: