RI among least racially tolerant countries
Nadya Natahadibrata, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | National | Mon, May 20 2013, 9:56 AM
Paper Edition | Page: 4
Indonesia, a country that has been recognized for nurturing hostility against religious minorities, has now also been acknowledged for its low tolerance of people of different races.
A report released by the World Values Survey, a global study of social attitudes carried out by Swedish economists, shows that Indonesia is skeptical about diversity and is racially intolerant, as fewer people want to live in neighborhoods with people from other races.
The report, which asked respondents from more than 80 different countries whom they would not like to have as neighbors, found that 34.7 percent of respondents in Indonesia in 2001 said they would not want "people of another race" as their neighbors. This percentage decreased slightly in 2006 with 30.7 percent of respondents saying they would not like to live next to people of a different race.
Indonesia was colored red with the same level of tolerance as Egypt (34.2 percent) and Saudi Arabia (37.7 percent).
The percentage is relatively higher than those recorded in neighboring countries; for example, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines only had an average of 20 to 29.9 percent of respondents who were reluctant to live side-by-side with people from other races.
The survey, which was carried out from 1981 to 2008, placed the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand among the world's most racially tolerant countries, with only up to 4.9 percent of people unwilling to share their neighborhoods with people of a different race.
Hong Kong appeared to be the most racially intolerant nation, with 71.8 percent of respondents saying they would not wish to live alongside people of different races.
Responding to the findings, University of Indonesia (UI) sociologist Paulus Wirotomo said that just because more than 30 percent of respondents in Indonesia were reluctant to have neighbors from a different race, did not mean they were racially intolerant.
"Some people may be reluctant to have neighbors of a different race, but it doesn't mean that they would violently attempt to oust those people from their neighborhood," Paulus told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
"Just because they opt not to interact with people from different races doesn't mean that they are intolerant," he added.
According to him, the main probable cause was the fact that Indonesia was not as culturally diverse as Malaysia or Singapore, where people from many races live in the same neighborhoods.
"Indonesia is not as 'international' as those countries, and some people are still afraid to interact with people from different races, particularly those who live outside big cities."
Previously, the Indonesian Survey Circle (LSI) found in its 2012 survey that a staggering 80.6 percent of respondents objected to having gays or lesbians as neighbors. The figure had jumped significantly from 64.7 percent in 2005.
The LSI survey, which interviewed 1,200 people between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8, found that intolerance toward homosexuals was higher than the respondents' aversion toward people of different faiths, which stood at 15.1 percent.
The respondents said they would prefer to live next door to people deemed as following deviant sects, like Shiites and Ahmadis, rather than gays or lesbians.
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