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Indonesian People

The official state motto of Indonesia that have been promoted since 50 years ago is known as Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity). However, along with the country’s development, the Indonesian people are commonly divided based on ethnicities, religion, tribes, clans, and even castes. Besides that, there are also class societies which pretty much determined by the wealth status of the people. These volatile aspects have been making broad gaps in the Indonesian People. To give a more statistic scale of the tribes diversion, here is the illustration: the Sundanese (14%) from western Java, the Madurese (7.5%) from the island of Madura, and Coastal Malays (7.5%), mostly from Sumatra, the Javanese (45%) of central and eastern Java. The other 26% consists of the Balinese, the Acehnese and Minangkabau of Sumatra, the Iban and Dayaks of Kalimantan, and a bewildering patchwork of groups in Nusa Tenggara and Papua.

Indonesian People


Indonesian people live happily side by side in most parts of Indonesia territory, however, some ethnic conflicts have been happening in some remote areas of Indonesia. There is a policy initiated by the Dutch called as the transmigration (transmigrasi) which was continued in the regime of Soeharto. This policy was basically to resettle the Indonesia people, especially the Javanese, Maduranese and Balinese to new resettlements which are not crowded. The transmigration people were sometimes hated by the locals, due to their privileged and insensitive. It happened particularly in Papua and Kalimantan, and it sometimes arouse into violent conflict.

One prominent ethnic that will be found almost in every part of Indonesia are the Indonesian Chinese. They are also called as Tionghoa, or to some extent refering to offensive Cina. The population of the Indonesian Chinese is estimated to be around 3% of the National population, or it is around 6-7 millions. Despite of their minority number, they are able to give a great influence on the National Economic growth. For example, based on the data of the Jakarta Stock Exchange, there are approximately 70% companies which are controlled by the Indonesian Chinese. They have thus been subject to persecution, with Chinese forcibly relocated into urban areas in the 1960s, forced to adopt Indonesian names and bans imposed on teaching Chinese and displaying Chinese characters. Anti-Chinese pogroms have also take place, notably in the 1965-66 anti-Communist purges after Suharto’s coup and again in 1998 after his downfall, when over 1100 people were killed in riots in Jakarta and other major cities. However, the post-Reformasi governments have overturned most of the discriminatory legislation, and Chinese writing and Chinese festivals have made a tentative reappearance.

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