The few remedies, which were only rarely offered, were in the form of show-arrests or superficial symbolic reconciliation. The use of officially approved words and terms with very strong negative racial connotations to describe Indonesians of Chinese descent have the effect of building a thick dividing wall between the citizens of Chinese ethnic and all other ethnic groups. This stigmatization of the Chinese ethnic is also further supported by assimilation policy adopted by the government, that implies that being Chinese is something which should be hidden, condemned and as much as possible minimized in order to blend in with the rest of the society. This in turn detrimentally effects the Indonesian ethnic Chinese both in a psychological, as well as a physical way. Religious affairs have been a highly regulated aspect of the Indonesian society.
Segregation based on religion is obvious from the restraint placed on inter-religious marriage.
Further, many religions are seen as undeserving of official recognition. The Chinese belie,Confucianism, for instance, is one such religion. Again here discrimination targeted at the ethnic Chinese comes into play. Unsurprisingly, this is also a base on which many riots and atrocities have occurred in Indonesia, most markedly during 1999 when racial and ethnic issues triggered much mass-violence. Discrimination at its most extreme took the form of warfare between religious groups, mass-killings of civilians of a certain religion, destruction and burning of places of worship.