Narratives of exile twenty years on: long-term impacts of Indonesia’s 1998 violence on transnational Chinese-Indonesian women

ABSTRACT

In response to Indonesia’s 1998 riots, which included mass rape of Chinese-Indonesian women, many Chinese-Indonesian families sent their daughters out of country to try and ensure their safety. Drawing on interviews with Chinese-Indonesian women currently living in Singapore and Australia, this article considers the long-term effects on transnational families of this departure. In contrast to current views of Chinese-Indonesians as an affluent diaspora, we show Chinese-Indonesian women’s experience to be that of exile, living outside Indonesia with little possibility of permanent return. We illuminate the subtle and enduring effects of political violence on women’s marital, reproductive, and childrearing practices. Interviews reveal fragmented identities and contingent household formations which enabled family resilience for some but created long-term fissures for the majority. We argue for more critical attention to how gender mutually constitutes experiences of exile, and the long-term impacts of political violence on reproduction and family relations for Chinese-Indonesian women.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese-Indonesian women
• exile
• family
• Australia
• Singapore

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. This dismisses the structural issues of discrimination and ongoing violence on the twentieth anniversary of the 1998 riots. Chinese-Indonesians continue to fear repeat violence due to renewed anti-Chinese sentiments in 2016 and 2017 (Jakarta Post, 31 October 2017). Violence against women was also a feature of the renewed anti-Chinese sentiments in 2016–17 (Tribune News, 17 April 2017).

2. This research formed part of a larger study entitled Southeast Asian Women, Family, and Migration in the Global Era, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Grant #435–2013-0079. We also acknowledge the support provided by the National University of Singapore and La Trobe University in Melbourne Australia for portions of this research. We thank members of the Indonesian diaspora for their generous support in facilitating linkages, and we are particularly grateful to the respondents discussed in this article for generously sharing their stories and insights with the research team.

3. Ethical consent was obtained from the Ethics Review Board of the University of Victoria, BC Canada in 2014. In the participant information statement, researchers outlined the topics to be discussed and specific measures taken to minimize stress, any fears experienced, or emotional strain associated with talking about the past such as: halting interviews, having respondents bring a friend along for emotional support, providing information about counselling and local support services available, and offering to accompany respondents to those services if needed. The two respondents who found discussing their past to be emotionally challenging brought friends with them for emotional support for before and after the interview. All respondents discussed in this article were interviewed by either the first or third author of this article, who adhered to procedures recommended by Liamputtong (2007) on researching vulnerable populations. In addition, the prior experiences of the lead first author as a Chinese-Indonesian woman living in exile conditions facilitated empathetic relations with several respondents who felt able to voice their experiences candidly; others noted in debriefing sessions they felt the third author created interview conditions to allow respondents to speak candidly about a topic they rarely talked about, and they found the interviews to be cathartic and empowering.

4. Prime Minister of Singapore at the time, Lee Kuan Yew, claimed to receive prior information about riots against Chinese-Indonesians from an Indonesian military commander (Lee 2000, 316–317).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [435-2013-0079]