[Nulgath]

It appears that some people hate Jakarta Governor Basuki “Ahok” Tjahaja Purnama, an Indonesian of minority Chinese descent, so much due to his race that his name is unfortunately being used as a racial slur.

Recently, a Facebook user by the name of Andrew BudiKusuma posted about a horrid experience riding the TransJakarta bus on Friday evening. According to him, he was attacked by three to four men for no reason other than the fact that he is Chinese Indonesian.

Andrew detailed in his post that he got on a TransJakarta bus from Kuningan Barat at 8:30pm on Friday. His would be attackers got on the bus from Semanggi at 9pm and immediately threw racial slurs at him, saying, “Ahok, you’re Ahok right?”

When the bus reached the JCC bus stop, the attackers allegedly shoved Andrew out of the bus and started beating him. Luckily, other passengers grabbed Andrew and pulled him back into the bus, leaving the attackers at the bus stop. In his post, Andrew uploaded a photo of the damaged lips he sustained from the beating, though he did not reveal if he received further injuries.

Andrew noted that the TransJakarta officer on the bus did not try to stop the beating either out of fear or because he was an accomplice of the attackers. The officer also allegedly wasn’t helpful when Andrew was trying to file a report and obtain the CCTV footage of the attack to be given to the authorities as evidence.

Thankfully, Andrew did obtain CCTV footage of the incident at the JCC bus stop, and he wrote in his post that he plans to report the incident to the Jakarta Metro Police tomorrow.

Andrew’s Facebook post has been gaining a lot of traction over the weekend and he seems to have gained the support of the nation’s equality-seeking citizens, as comments poured in expressing sympathy for Andrew and condemnation for the attack.

We hope Andrew finds justice and that the culprits are found and punished accordingly. While we may have come a long way from when Chinese Indonesian minorities became targets of discrimination and brutality in the 1998 riots (having a Chinese Indonesian governor of Jakarta is testament to that), minority race groups are sadly still being discriminated against in Indonesia, thereby putting irony in the fact that “Unity in Diversity” is one of the country’s founding principles.