Golkar pledge : Discrimination against Chinese to end

THE ruling Golkar party has pledged to end all forms of discrimination against the ethnic Chinese and lift a ban on the study of their language if it wins the general election.

“We need to end all forms of discrimination,” the Kompas daily yesterday quoted State Secretary and Golkar chairman Akbar Tandjung as telling reporters. He also said every citizen should be free to study Chinese, which he said was now an international language.

He was speaking on Sunday after a Golkar meeting in Pontianak, East Kalimantan, which has a large concentration of ethnic Chinese. He said Chinese Indonesians should not be required to get citizenship certificates before applying for identity cards, something other groups do not have to do.