Ethnic Chinese key to Aceh fix-up

Mr. Chin's family fled Aceh in 1965, accused of sympathy with Beijing amidst anti-Communist fervor sweeping Indonesia after an alleged coup attempt in faraway Jakarta by Indonesia's Communist party, the PKI. "This disaster, the refugees, it all reminded me," he says.

Chin himself set up camp on Metal Street in Medan in the 1960s, where hundreds of homeless Acehnese Chinese families are now camping. Tolong Menolong was founded soon afterwards.

The organization has since helped to bring in doctors from Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore to treat tsunami victims. Businesses with a large number of ethnic Chinese employees, such as PT Astra Internasional, Indonesia's largest automotives maker, have also donated resources to the relief effort.

The ethnic Chinese, who make up around 4 percent of the country's 220-million people, have often become political scapegoats under Indonesian governments and also the former Dutch colonial regime, partly due to their prosperity and their relatively small numbers.

But Tolong Menolong, which now boasts a network of 400 families, has flourished under new cultural freedoms that blossomed after Indonesia took a stumbling step towards democracy when authoritarian President Suharto fell from power in 1998.

"We Chinese were harshly suppressed" under Suharto's 32-year rule, says Chin, speaking a week after the Chinese Lunar New Year celebration known as Imlek.

Under Suharto, open displays of Chinese culture, such as calligraphy or language schools, were banned, and many ethnic Chinese were pressured to take Muslim names.

By contrast, since 2000, the community has openly celebrated Imlek. A national television network features a Mandarin language program. Chin says the residents at Metal Street took a brief respite at Imlek with traditional celebrations. Even the nonethnic-Chinese governor arrived to distribute the traditional Ang Pao- red, cash-filled envelopes that usher in prosperity.

Tolong Menolong is now gently persuading thousands of displaced people to return to their homes and businesses in Aceh and start again. It is offering food and small cash grants in return for a pledge from recipients not to return to Metal Street.

Back in Banda Aceh, Pandy says he believes that people whose families survived and whose businesses weren't completely destroyed would return.

"Half of our customers are dead," he said last month, his eyes bloodshot and bleary after weeks of stress. "Half of them are still alive!" said Herawati, clad in her pajamas and snapping orders at employees.

Nearly a month later, a few more shops close by have opened, but business has not picked up. Pandy wants to pack up and move to Jakarta, but Maria's resolve to stay has not waned.

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