Ary Hermawan, Jakarta – The goodwill generated by the passing of the Citizenship Law on Tuesday will quickly dissipate if the government fails to end other forms of state discrimination against minorities in the country, experts warn.

Although the new law scraps the official distinction between "indigenous" and "non-indigenous" Indonesians, experts doubt it will end discrimination against Indonesians of Chinese descent. "The new law will only slightly reduce discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians. Theoretically, they no longer need an SBKRI (Indonesian citizenship certificate) to be recognized as Indonesian citizens, but what happens in reality is different," the chairwoman of antidiscrimination watchdog Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa, Esther Yusuf Purba, told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

The new law also has been hailed by activists for legally recognizing transnational marriages. However, they say government policy on citizenship will not change until regulations are issued to support the law. This is expected to happen in the next few months.

Esther said the new law did not provide any assurances that discrimination against Chinese-Indonesians would end in the near term.

"For them, (discrimination) is simply the consequence of being different. They will still have to bear the burden of prejudice from some people who think that all Chinese-Indonesians are well-off and therefore it is 'justifiable' to extort them.

"If they don't use an SBKRI, dishonest government officials will require other documents to make things difficult for Chinese-Indonesians to get what they want," she said.

Ethnic Chinese were required to obtain a citizenship certificate after Chinese premier Mao Tse Tung declared in 1950 that all Chinese around the world were "citizens of China". In response, Indonesia, which does not recognize dual citizenship, passed a law making the SBKRI mandatory for all Chinese-Indonesians if they wanted to obtain legal documents.

Ethnic Chinese in Jakarta say they continue to face difficulties when applying for legal documents, even though the law on citizenship certificates was scrapped in 1996, and a 1999 presidential decree specifically abolished the need to present the certificate.

They say local government agencies continue to ask for the SBKRI before issuing official documents. Some applicants choose the "fast lane", paying middlemen between Rp 300,000 (about US$33) and Rp 20 million to get documents to which they have a legal right.

Kompas daily reported Friday that Chinese-Indonesians in South Sumatra were still required to present a citizenship certificate when applying for passports and birth certificates, and to continue their studies. "This is terrible. We have to spend thousands of rupiah just to get an ID card," the chairman of a local Chinese community group, Fauzi Thamrin, told the newspaper.

Tamrin Amal Tomagola, a sociologist at the University of Indonesia, said ethnic Chinese would likely continue to suffer discriminatory treatment as long as the social segregation between them and "indigenous" Indonesians remained.

"The passage of the law must be followed by efforts to dismantle social segregation in society," he said. This segregation can be seen in the government policy regarding residential planning, he said.

Tamrin said many Chinese-Indonesians and some ethnic Indians lived in high-walled residences and studied at "exclusive schools", which "justified" the stereotype that they were a wealthy minority.

"The government has promised to put an end to any form of discrimination against minorities, but it hasn't even set up ways to dilute the segregation in society, which is actually the root of the problem," he said.