Wednesday, November 12, 2008

A man cannot choose to be born as part of a certain race or ethnic group...


The Jakarta Post Wed, 10/29/2008

The House of Representatives has unanimously passed a bill that terms ethnic and racial discrimination as serious crimes.

Deputy Speaker Muhaimin Iskandar, who presided over the House's plenary session to approve the draft law, said Indonesia no longer had any room for any form of racial or ethnic discrimination.

Chairman of the House's special committee deliberating the bill, Murdaya Poo, said the endorsement of the bill should put an end to the long-standing dichotomy between indigenous and non-indigenous people in the country.

"A man cannot choose to be born as part of a certain race or ethnic group, and therefore discrimination must cease to exist," said Murdaya, who is Indonesian-Chinese.

He said the House proposed the bill as part of its effort to ratify the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, which has been enacted since 1999.

Under the new law, leaders of public institutions found guilty of adopting discriminatory policies would face jail terms one-third more severe than those stipulated in the Criminal Code.
Citing an example, Murdaya said the governor or government of Aceh could not ban a gathering held by Javanese ethnics in the province.

He said the deliberation process had been delayed by a disagreement on whether imprisonment should be made the minimum punishment.

Jail as a minimum sentence is typically sought for serious crimes, such as corruption, terrorism, money laundering or drug abuse.

"We decided to set prison as the minimum sentence to deter people from committing racial or ethnic discrimination," said Murdaya, a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P).

The bill was passed on the same day Indonesia celebrated the 100th anniversary of Youth Pledge, which Murdaya said should encourage Indonesians to uphold the diverse nature of the nation. -- JP

p/s photos: Coco Chiang

5 comments:

graph cut said...

I totally agree with this statement.
Hope that our country will have our very own OBAMA very soon :)

Chan Kwang Yew said...

It is sad, very very sad to see all our neighbours moving forward and we are moving backward in every field. Those things that we are moving higher and higher are crime rate and corruption.Very sad.

Born2Reign said...

So happy to see Indonesia moving on. If environment is good, I don't mind diverting my funds there and live there..after all the mamaks here ask us to shift out.

We can join the ranks of the ultra rich Chinese, and get the Indon illegals to move to Malaysia - Khairy can recruit them as Mat Rempits.

Maybe it is because they don't have any Sultans and Raja's to complicate things.

bayi said...

Now Indonesia is leaps and bounds ahead of us...

Unknown said...

OBAMA speaks perfect English, the language of the white majority.

OBAMA is a christian, the religon of the white majority.

to have a chinese PM, that chinese needs to be assimilated to the majority race first and be accepted by the majority race. in other words, that person may look chinese, but a malay inside.

so i think malaysia has a long way to go to have an OBAMA.