Tales of stateless, foreigner status Jakartan Chinese

(News Terupdate) - Sian, 44, and Lenah, 25, know the power of the Indonesian citizenship document; lacking that piece of paper has ensured stateless Lenah is trapped in the circle of poverty; while for foreigner Sian, not having one has driven her prospective Javanese husband away.

“Shocked by the Rp 10 million [US$1,000] marriage paperwork fee, set by a middaleman, for people with foreigner legal status as I. My ex-boyfriend decided not to marry me two years ago,” said Sian, who refused to have her full name published, now living in a slum area of Krendang Timur, West Jakarta.

Sian’s Chinese family, culturally, became Indonesian for generations, but the New Order government (1966-1998), coupled with its indifferent and corruptive mindset, had turned the family into foreigner legal status. For Sian, the status entailed serious consequence: trapped in poverty, as the only available jobs, upon graduating from junior high school (SMP), are at workplaces where citizenship documents are not required.

Sian thrived for Indonesian citizenship, but her efforts often faced corrupt officials. “In the 1980s, sub-district officers asked Rp 800,000 [US$85.4] for processing my documents,” she recalled, a fare too high for her shop attendant Rp 43,000 monthly payment.

In 2005, Sian applied for a temporary stay permit (KITAS), to stay legally in Indonesia, but this step became complicated. To acquire a KITAS, one requires a document of citizenship, she was told to apply for this at the Chinese Embassy.

The woman, who could not speak Chinese, received a Chinese passport in 2005, just a year before the ratification of the citizenship law that imposes fines against civil servants who commit discrimination, thanks to the right-of-blood (jus sanguinis) principle embraced by the People’s Republic of China.

If Sian is an example of a foreigner in her home country, Lenah’s story reflects how the corrupt system made her and her children stateless.

Without formal citizenship documents, Lenah parents were despondent regarding their 16-year-old daughter, then married to tofu maker Sauw Tjin Siu in 2001. Their three children who were born out of wedlock, consequently bore stateless status.

“I could not continue my study to senior high school level as [the institution] required the SBKRI [the certificate of Indonesian citizenship]. So, after SMP, I helped my mother as a food manufacturer,” Lenah shared in Teluk Gong slum area, West Jakarta.

Sian and Lenah’s accounts challenge the Chinese stereotype as prosperous. The ratification of the 2006 Citizenship Law, praised for its reconciliatory spirit, has not facilitated their citizenships.

Experts agreed that the Dutch colonial administration on civil registration that segregated the population based on ethnicity and religion, as provisioned in the State Gazette No. 1849 for Europeans, State Gazette No. 1917 for ethnic Chinese, State Gazette No. 1920 for non-Christian indigenous people (bumiputera) and State Gazette No. 1933 for indigenous Christians, as the root of a lingering citizenship problem, mostly affected the Chinese.

“When the New Order government introduced crony capitalism, the social gap between the Chinese and the rest of the nation became a significant issue,” said Frans Hendra Winarta, chairman of the Indonesian Legal Studies Foundation (ELSAF).

“It was not until 1965, when Jakarta accused Beijing of supporting a failed coup attempt, that racism was institutionalized, and that Chinese victimized most compared to other foreign ethnic groups,” Frans said.
In 1966 the New Order government started.

Eddy Setiawan from the Indonesia Civics Institute (IKI) that aims to assist people with citizenship document problems, said that the government’s indifferent attitude in translating the civil registration inherited from the Dutch had made “the water murkier”.

The racial identity remark in the birth certificates of the Chinese was then translated three different ways, “Tionghoa citizen” (Chinese citizen), “RRT citizen” (citizen of the People’s Republic of China) and “foreign citizen” without giving any references to any state.

The seemingly “trivial choice of words” has brought consequences: foreigner legal status for Sian and stateless status for Lenah.

“Our government acted passively,” said Sauw Tjin Siu, “In 2006 I heard from TV news that the government would address [civil rights] problems. For the sake of my stateless wife, I asked for further information at subdistrict office, but the officials knew nothing.”

Thanks to Tjin Siu’s persistence on fighting for citizenship, now his wife Lenah and their children as well as relatives can obtain citizenship documents.

Atik Kadarwati, Vital Statistics Office’s acting head of the directorate of citizenship admitted that changing citizenship was a bottom-up approach, resulting in lack of data on a number of undocumented citizens.

“We only record the number of people who have acquired their citizenship,” Atik said, adding that between 2007 and Nov. 2009 the number in Jakarta reached to 605.

Lawyer Frans had the opinion that the authority’s indifferent mindset no longer had anything to do with racial discrimination, “To disseminate progressive ideas [of the citizenship law], making it our legal culture, will take time. The law in theory and law in action can be two different things.”

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