Puteri Indonesia 2015 finalist Olvah Alhamid posted clarification after racist video went viral

A video showing Puteri Indonesia 2015 finalist Olvah Hamid’s racist behaviour went viral online on TikTok last week. It all began when she posted an Instagram story of her arriving at Soekarno-Hatta airport. 

In the video, she recorded the people she saw while uttering racist remarks. “Look at these people, they are all Chinese. They’re scared, they fear us when actually they are the ones who brought the disease into Indonesia,” Olvah said. She also shouted the word “Cina” in a negative tone which carries negative connotations. 

Detik viewed this incident as an “irony” because Olvah has been very vocal about ending racism and discrimination in Indonesia as she comes from Papua, one of the Indonesian communities that often receives racist treatment. She even put the phrase “stop racism and discrimination” on her Instagram bio. 

After the video was circulated online and went viral, she posted a clarification video on her Instagram account. She apologised and said that all of her explanations will never justify what she did. 

She, however, explained that she has an emotional wound she got from other people, especially Chinese. She has been carrying it since she was in school, saying that back then she always received mistreatment due to her race. 

“I studied in Surabaya for three years, where I was treated very, very badly. My sister also received similar mistreatments. So did my parents. My parents and I once went to a mall, and people spat on us," she stated.

She also shared her negative experience when she was in Jakarta, where a person called her “monkey” while she was walking around a mall. 

“Moreover, prior to the video, these people looked at me as if I’m disgusting. Hence this treatment which I received in the plane hurt me and fueled up my emotion," she said.

In the comment section, a netizen wrote that, “She already knows how bad it feels when people are being racist at you, but she decided to be racist to others,” while another one commented that she is being defensive in her clarification video.