Race nation-building and communism in suharto’s indonesia

The origin of cold war dates back to the period after the Second World War from America and the Soviet Union. Even though the two states fought together during the Second World War against the Axis powers, their relationship was viewed to be under entanglement, maybe because of a rivalry towards becoming superpowers (Slater, 2018). Many countries followed including the Asian countries which had a lot of internal differences in ideologies and political affiliations. Indonesia, when used as an example, has faced many cases of cold war based on race and the view of nation-building. The motive of this paper is to examine significant information which regards the cold war in Indonesia. The first example of the disputes was experienced during his attempt to overthrow the government of Sukarno.

There were a lot of protests during the reign of Suhamo. The leading cause of the rally was the confirmation of the proposal of Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI) to include a fifth military whose components was to include armed peasants and workers (Putra et al. The communists of the time lead by military leaders under Suharto instead planned a coup to overthrow Suhamo from the government because of the very many political and ideological differences. Suhamo who was the president from independence lived in fear of the communists so that even in his speech during the independence celebrations, he cited that he would like to commit Indonesia to a non-imperialistic coalition with China and pleaded with the communists and the military not to interfere with that decision.

Immediately after independence, the native Indonesians felt that everybody who was a foreigner must leave their country. Therefore, they started a war on the Chinese and Japanese natives. Intermarriage occurred during pre and post-independence periods which gave rise to Indonesians of both Chinese and Japanese origins. The fight was, therefore, waged to eliminate any Indonesian who had another ancestry apart from the originality of the Indonesian land (Kurniawan, 2018). The victims of racism found it very difficult to freely interact, purchase products in Indonesian shops and even own property in the Indonesian area. President Suharto was born to Javanese parents, and for that reason, he was a Javanese. Some form of racism also characterized his dictatorial rule in terms of allocation of resources and appointment of leaders.

Most of the government officials came from the Javanese community thus sparking ethnic rivalries. The various ethnic groups accordingly resolved to love their people compared to how they would enjoy and interact with people of different ethnicities. It was referred to as the war of the minds whose impact was jealousy. Many of the fighters and the leaders of the communist group were arrested and detained (Vickers, 2018). One of the causes of the fight was the massive violation of human rights and especially the rights of the detainees. The arrest became the genesis and mother of most of the political protests in the country. Some of the detainees were found dead, and Suharto had to blame the killings on the military and the police who support the central ideas of the president Sukarno.

There are, however, a bunch of the detainees who managed to escape from the prisons with some injured and some not injured. The independence also gave the natives some economic freedom as they had to reacquire the property that had been lost to the administrators of the Dutch Empire. Hatred due to Racial Discrimination: - As already mentioned, Indonesia is considered as a multiracial country. The races have been in a constant war against each other. One of the effects that have been experienced is the hatred occurring amongst all the racial groups including the Javanese, the Sudanese, the Maduranese and Chinese living in Indonesia (Zhuang, 2019). The hatred and constant disputes have put at stake the rate at which the Indonesian economy could grow.

In essence, it should be understood that the major causes of the cold war in Indonesia were categorized into three major groups. The first group of objects was racial discrimination based on ethnicity and religion. The second category involves the political differences which not only brought a positive move like independence but also led to issues of political rivalry between Sukarno and Suharto. The communist purge was the third group of causes of cold war. The differences in administrative ideologies mostly caused expulsion. , Pitaloka, A. , Kronberger, N. , & Arbiyah, N. Positive essentialization reduces prejudice: Reminding participants of a positive human nature alleviates the stigma of Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) descent.  Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 6(2), 291-314. 1093/ahr/rhy533 Slater, D. Violent Origins of Authoritarian Variation: Rebellion Type and Regime Type in Cold War Southeast Asia.