This video frame grab shows Indonesian President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo delivering his speech at a virtual gathering for National “Imlek” Chinese New Year celebration on Feb 5, 2022.
Indonesian leaders joined ethnic Chinese communities in the 2022 National “Imlek” Chinese New Year celebration on Saturday, encouraging stronger national solidarity in fighting the pandemic and striving for economic recovery.
Speaking by video, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo expressed his gratitude to the everyone who joined in celebrating the special occasion.
Speaking by video, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo expressed his gratitude to the everyone who joined in celebrating the special occasion
“I am hopeful that the Khonghucu community will continue to tirelessly maintain the spirit of tolerance and national unity. I believe that our social asset namely our spirit of brotherhood as a nation and with our one and the same motherland will get stronger and stronger,” he said.
“Let us make the pandemic a bridge for building solidarity that provides an opportunity for easing the burdens of our brothers and sisters with friendliness and brotherhood warmth,” he told the festive audience," he added.
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Widodo, Vice-President Maruf Amin and almost all other dignitaries taking part in the ceremony wore red, long sleeve “batik” shirts.
They included People’s Consultative Assembly Chairwoman Puan Maharani, House of Representatives Chairman Bambang Soesatyo, National Police Chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo and a number of Cabinet ministers. Other participants included provincial governors and top leaders of religious councils and religion-based mass organizations.
The country's leaders took turns to extend their best wishes to all Indonesians who celebrate the Lunar New Year, including in traditional Chinese festival greetings.
Maharani, a granddaughter of Indonesia’s independence leader Sukarno and the daughter of former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, said this year’s Lunar New Year celebration was a moment to realize the long-lasting tradition of mutual help and mutual love upheld by all communities across the nation. Her call was echoed by other leaders on the occasion.
Groups of young people performed dances and read poems, all calling for unity, harmony and brotherhood as taught in the Khonghucu religion, which is smilar to Confucianism.
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Budi Sanatoso Tanuwibowo, chairman of MATAKIN, or Supreme Council for the Confucian Religion in Indonesia, expressed his community’s appreciation for the government’s campaign to maintain religious harmony in the past years.
“That the President has addressed us is a very good thing. It is really encouraging us, the Khonghucu community,” Tanuwibowo told China Daily.
Khonghucu members in Indonesia, mostly ethnic Chinese, account for only 0.04 percent of the country’s total population of 272 million people, according to official data. Ethnic Chinese in general make up about 6 percent of Indonesia’s total population.
Tanuwibowo was one of a team of Chinese-Indonesians who suggested to former president Abdurrahman Wahid, who served between 1999 and 2001, to allow Khonghucu believers to openly celebrate the Lunar New Year and perform traditional Chinese festivals.
After Wahid declared Chinese New Year Imlek an optional holiday, the “Imlek” Lunar New Year had been celebrated publicly since 2001. His successor former President Megawati Sukarnoputri made it an official national holiday beginning in 2003.
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During these times of the COVID-19 pandemic, the community through its organizations has given significant help for those in need. They provided masks, hand sanitizers, medicines, oxygen tubes, vaccines and many other forms of assistance. In addition, many individual followers of Khonghucu had donated through different other channels, Tanuwibowo said.
Social observer Iskandar Yusuf said Indonesia is making progress in maintaining harmonious relations among ethnic groups, including harmony between ethnic Chinese and indigenous people.
Yusuf is against criticisms that all Chinese-Indonesians tend to live an exclusive lifestyle. “Quite a small portion of their number, yes,” Yusuf said, noting that old generations of ethnic Chinese could not easily mingle with natives because they spoke too little Indonesian and because the previous colonialist policies of dividing the population into separate groups.
Hanny Handoko, a 40-year old entrepreneur of Chinese descent in Bandar Lampung in southern Sumatra, said that ethnic Chinese in his area got along well with members of other ethnic groups. However, he expressed his worry about potential racial conflicts incited by the social media. “I deeply feel the pros and cons that appear in the social media.”
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Handoko said he and his fellow ethnic Chinese viewed the Lunar New year as an extraordinarily joyful opportunity to get together with family members, opening their homes to relatives and friends to enjoy special meals.
Yet decades of forced segregation had caused many Chinese Indonesians unfamiliar with traditional cultural practices, including the ability to speak and write in Chinese language.
The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.