ABSTRACT
The Chinese Indonesians have often been blamed or victimized as scapegoats, historically and repeatedly, at times of social and political unrest in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia. The Dutch colonial times exacerbated segregation and alienation of Chinese Indonesians from pribumi (native Indonesians), and economic ‘privileges’ were given to the Chinese to create resentment among the pribumi. Postcolonial governments continued to play out this same position ing, and the financial domination of the Chinese Indonesians kept on generating rancor against them (Schwarz 1994). This group was physically, politically, culturally and religiously alienated during colonial times, and forms of state- and self-imposed alienation have continued in postcolonial times, which have exacerbated their segregation from other Indonesians (Budiman 2005; Hoon 2008; Suryadinata 2004). The earliest written account in English of the discrimination against the Chinese recorded the Chinese Massacre of 1740 (Stockdale 1811). The beginning and the end of 32 years of dictatorship by Indonesia's second President Suharto (1966–1998) were marked by political turmoil, which targeted Chinese Indonesians as victims of lootings, killings, arson and mass rapes (Hoon 2006, 2008; Purdey 2005).
