(1998, Indonesia) Ethnic Chinese tell of mass rapes

BBC ^ | June 23, 1998

[Miss Marple]

There is a lot more to this than Islam. The ethnic Chinese in Indonesia controlled much of the commerce after the Dutch left. When Indonesia became independent, there was much antipathy between the indigenous Indonesians and the ethnic Chinese.

Most people of Chinese descent changed their names to Indonesian sounding names. There is still much emnity between the two groups.

My husband interviewed for a job in Indonesia back in 96. The owners of the company were ethnic Chinese. As they were driving in from the airport, they saw a body beside the road with police looking at it. My husband said, "My gosh, what happened."

The Chinese guy said "Don't worry. It's just one of the locals."

This was said even though a non-Chinese Indonesian was driving the car.

At any rate, lots of bad stuff in that part of the world, and it is not only Islam but the Chinese and the almost-communist economy they had for so many years.

[BobL]

...I'm sure there's more sides to the story, but there are ways to deal with minorities that do well economy, other than following the Hitler model. I'll always have a big problem with a group that's a 90%+ minority convinced that it has to take the actions mentioned in this article against its minority.

I work next to Coptic Christian who emigrated from Egypt. You should his stories...

[Miss Marple]

Oh, not disagreeing really. It is just that I wanted to add to the background. Third world countries are often filled with ethnic hatred, and Islamic fundamentalism is astute at exploiting it.

[BobL]

Agreed. One last comment. China can't do much today to protect Indonesia's ethnic Chinese, but China can take notes, and will be able to act fairly soon.

The Muslims in Indonesia may want to consider this next time.