JAKARTA Indonesian President B.J. Habibie has issued a presidential instruction which requires authorities to allow the teaching of the Chinese language, a report said Friday. The order also scraps a regulation that requires ethnic Chinese to produce a certificate of Indonesian nationality when entering a school or making any official application, the Kompas daily said. I hope this instruction will be heeded and implemented whole-heartedly by the authorities from the central (government) to the regions, State Secretary Akbar Tanjung was quoted as saying.

In the regulation, issued on May 5, Habibie instructed his ministers and government institutions to implement a presidential decree issued in 1996 but never followed, which scrapped the requirement for ethnic-Chinese to produce official Indonesian nationality certificate. It also stipulates that government institutions implement a presidential instruction issued in 1998, which had also been ignored, which lifted the ban on the teaching of Chinese. During the authoritarian rule of former president Suharto the teaching of Chinese was restricted and ethnic Chinese were required to produce Indonesian nationality certificate when they wished to enter schools or apply official documents.

Ethnic-Chinese, who make up three to four percent of the country's 202 million population, are also required to take Indonesian names, and restricted in the practice of Chinese culture and confucianism, which is not among the five reconized religions in Indonesia. The five are Islam, Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Since the massive riots in the country last May targetting ethnic-Chinese, Jakarta has been under pressure to scrap racially discriminative laws.

(AFP)