In 1966, the Indonesian government issued a policy which
strongly recommended Indonesian citizens of Chinese descent change
their names into Indonesian ones to prove their loyalty to
Indonesia.
This policy was released in the wake of the Soeharto regime's
closures of Chinese schools, bans on public expressions of Chinese
culture and language and widespread government suspicion regarding
the Chinese community's role in the PKI's (The Indonesian Communist
Party's) uprising in 1965.
Being a heterogeneous and diverse community, the Chinese in
Indonesia responded to the name-changing policy in distinct ways.
My father chose to change his name to Didi Dawis from Djie Ie
Ling.
His other six siblings chose different names for themselves. One
of his siblings who chose to keep his Chinese name.
While the names chosen by my father's family (except for his
youngest brother) have been Indonesianized to the extent most
people cannot tell that they are Chinese, there are other
Indonesian names chosen by the Chinese in Indonesia that implicitly
indicate that they are still Chinese.
For example, those with the Chinese surnames of Tan, Ong and Wee
chose Indonesianized surnames such as Tanuwijaya, Ongggara and
Wijaya.
These names show a desire to retain a sense of Chineseness while
at the same time complying with the government's policy.
When Abdurrahman Wahid served as the President of Indonesia
between November 1999 and August 2001, he abolished the
Presidential Instruction Number 14, signed in 1967 by Soeharto,
which restricted the practice of Chinese customs and religions to
private domain.
Following this abolition, he signed the Presidential Instruction
Number 6, stipulated in the year 2000, which allows the public
celebration of the Chinese New Year.
Megawati took a step further by declaring Chinese New Year has
been a national holiday in 2003.
As extracted from:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/02/06/i-am-chineseindonesian.html