Episode 30: May 1998 Remembered & Rekindled? — Featuring Dr. Jemma Purdey

Dialogika Podcast

In this episode — on the week of the 19th anniversary of the May 1998 riots — we talk with our long-time academic crush Dr. Jemma Purdey of Monash University, author of Anti-Chinese Violence in Indonesia, 1996-1999 and co-host of the Talking Indonesia podcast. She helped us unpack what really happened leading up to the May 1998 riots, which killed over 2000 people and led to the rape of 152 Chinese-Indonesian women. We discuss how this event was not due to organic, spontaneous anger but rather was engineered based on ‘stable’ racism against Chinese-Indonesians. We also talked about Indonesia’s history of racism against ethnic Chinese-Indonesians, the impact it has had on national economics and its lasting effects on the psyche of the Chinese-Indonesian community. In light of Ahok’s recent jail sentence, we discuss the current rising anti-Chinese sentiments, and finally, we end on a hopeful note that Indonesia’s maturing civil society and young democracy has grown enough that we can not only start to talk about the reality of what happened in May 1998, but also prevent it from happening again in the future. AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT! We will be taking a break to refocus our energy on lining up better interviews, stories, and sound engineering. For any of you who are interested in becoming more involved, we’d love to have you onboard as field producers/researchers/any role you’d be interested in. Email us at [e-mail] or message us on Facebook! We’re looking forward to being back in a few weeks!