‘Chinese Whispers’ contemplates 1998 riots through digital graphic novel

http://www.thejakartapost.com/life/2018/05/08/chinese-whispers-contempla…

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“We cannot heal what we cannot face.”

Within South-East Asia, Indonesia has always been perceived as a country famously racist against Chinese people. In 1998, political and economic instability sparked off riots that primarily targeted Chinese-Indonesians. Accounts of rape, destruction of property, and murder shocked the world – one politician even likened the riots to the Nazi’s genocide against Jews. It is interesting to look at how narratives have changed since then.

The news article features Chinese Whispers, a digital graphic novel centred around the events of the 1998 riots. While the author accounts how her childhood in Jakarta drove her to create this graphic novel, I note that the medium is digital, which means that it would be harder to restrict. While the emergence of Chinese narratives on the riots might indicate how Indonesia might have progressed since then, the topic might still be heavily censured in Indonesian media. In fact, the author admits that “took her team five years to be able to present CW” in Indonesian without explaining why – suggesting that there might have been a struggle with the censorship of the riots. In addition, graphic novels might be targeted at urban audiences, which means that we cannot be certain about narratives in rural Indonesian communities.

Art as a medium to tackle narratives of history is meaningful. It pokes at the public consciousness and reveals how Indonesia has changed since then. Would people respond angrily to the novel, arguing that violence was justified? Or would they get upset over their history and decide that racism has no place in modern Indonesia? These are questions that the article do not answer, perhaps due to the sensitivity of the topic, but investigating the responses of Indonesians to art related to the 1998 riots would be intriguing.