Accounts of Gang Rape of Chinese Women Emerge from Jakarta Riots

Andreas Harsono

American Reporter Correspondent

Jakarta, Indonesia

(06/13/98)

JAKARTA -- Gruesome tales of brutal sexual and racist violence in

Indonesia have slowly begun to emerge here as social workers and human

rights advocates learn more of an organized campaign of assaults, gang

rapes and killings of ethnic Chinese women during three days of rioting in

Jakarta last month.

Indonesian media only reported the violence -- initially only rumored on the

Internet and among the small Chinese community in Jakarta -- after scores

of social workers, feminists and Chinese figures had announced the setting

up of a crisis center to help the victims.

"Tell me, what kind of human beings are evil enough to rape a 12-year-old

girl in front of her helpless parents?" asked Ita F. Nadia, the chairwoman of

Kalyanamitra, a women's group which opened a telephone hotline for the

victims.

"They're incredibly cruel and brutal," said Nadia.

The establishment of the center, named the Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa or the

Solidarity of the Nation State, was announced in a meeting on June 5 in

Jakarta, during which Catholic priest Sandyawan Sumardi estimated that

dozens of Chinese women had died or committed suicide because of the

violence on May 14-16.

Sandyawan, who is known because of his work among Jakarta's underclass

and has organized an investigation into the attack, said that the

anti-Chinese attack had shown a pattern of similarities and usually involved

"well-built men with [a] crew-cut hairstyle."

The unidentified men generally began the violence by coming to a street in

a truck or a bus and attacking only one house on the street. They

encouraged other people in the area to join them in attacking the other

Chinese-owned houses in the vicinity and then looting their contents.

Although Sandyawan did not pinpoint any group, his statement is widely

intrepretated here to refer to military men. Rumors circulated widely here

that some high-ranking army officers were involved in the riots which

targeted the Chinese -- the equivalent of here of Jews in Hitler's Germany.

"They always threatened their victims not to talk to the media. They said

they could easily recognize those who speak up as they only attack one

house on every street," said Sandyawan, adding that the provocateurs also

gang-raped Chinese women before leaving the street.

"We don't know how many have been molested or forced to strip naked.

They obviously want to terrorize the Chinese and especially the women,"

she said.

Both Kolibonso and Nadia, who give legal and psychological counseling to

the victims, refused to provide their names to the media, saying that the

victims are extremely traumatized and that publication of their names might

endanger their lives.

The sudden resignation of Indonesian strongman Suharto on May 21

apparently overshadowed coverage of the brutal violence, as did the

student movement which helped forced Suharto to step down.

But rumors about the gang rapes started to emerge on the Net after the

riots, which saw more than 100 supermalls and thousands of shops and

houses burned to the ground. Jakarta hospitals recorded more than 1,100

deaths during the riots, mostly of looters or residents trapped in burning

buildings and homes. The riots are widely thought to be the worst in

Jakarta's modern history.

Slowly and painfully, Kolibonso, Nadia and Sandyawan have compiled

accounts like the following from interviews with victims and witnesses:

A female Chinese student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a

swamp near the airport and raped by four men in a car. There was a

green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were

officers. "If you are police, you have to save me," she told them.

One of them answered, "No, I have to give you a lesson. You are a

woman and you are beautiful and you are part of the Chinese."

One young woman had a lucky escape after her taxi was stopped by

a mob in the middle of the night on May 14. She was forced out of

her taxi and forcibly stripped in front of the crowd. "Then a man

pushed through the crowd, pulled me out and gave me a Muslim

clothes to wear," the woman recalled.

In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and

forced out all the non-Chinese women. "Then they chose the

beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the

bus," Sandyawan said. "The victims of that incident are really

depressive. They are in the hospital with their families. They are

trying to hide themselves from the public."

A 10-year-old girl returning from school discovered that the shop

and house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As

she went in search of her parents, she was seized by two men and

raped in front of her neighbors.

A man told the Indonesian Human Rights Commission about how

his wife's attackers had mutilated her genitals with a razor blade after

first raping her. He also said about a friend's wife drank pesticide

and committed suicide a few days after being raped.

One woman, a bank officer, told the Kompas newspaper that she

was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of rioters and

thrown to the ground by a group of men. The mob beat her

boyfriend, who could only asked for mercy. The Chinese girl was so

hysterical and so panicked that she does not remember what

happened. When she regained her consciousness, she said, she

saw many bruises on her body, especially on her legs.

In an incident of public humiliation, a group of about 15 men entered

a bank where 10 ethnic Chinese employees were taking refuge from

the riot. The men locked the door, made the women take off their

clothes and ordered them to dance.

In another incident of harassment during the riot in Jakarta, a

number of ethnic Chinese women were reportedly stripped and

made to swim in a filthy pond.

Nadia told of an ethnic Chinese woman who hid in her house with her two

younger sisters as the rioters approached. About 10 men came into the

house and found the sisters on the third floor. They made the two younger

women take off their clothes and told the older sister to stand in a corner,

"because you are too old for us."

Meanwhile, arsonists entered the lower floors and set fire to the building.

"After they had raped her two sisters, the two men said to her, 'We are

finished and we are satisfied and because you are too old and ugly we

weren't interested in you.' So they took her two sisters and pushed them to

the ground floor where there was already fire, and they were killed.

"When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died," Nadia

said. "So now this woman is in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes she cries

when she tells the story and sometimes she is normal again. That is one of

the stories we have confirmed."

In an effort to respond to the horror of these stories, which have shocked

many Indonesians, President B.J. Habibie on June 11 ordered the armed

forces to investigate "organized crimes" that helped provoke the riots.

Indonesian police have asked victims to report such cases. But so far, not a

single victim has done so, apparently fearing that to do so will do more

harm than good. A police spokesman said police cannot do much without a

report to investigate.

In another case, the English-language Jakarta Post newspaper reported that

Chinese in the Ciledug area in southern Jakarta had cleaned up a painted

'BMC' sign left by a unidentified person on one home's front fence.

"I don't know anything about the sign but my neighbors told me to quickly

remove it because the letters stand for Basmi Milik Cina (Destroy the

Chinese Property)," said a Chinese man.

Data from the Coordinating Body for National Unity (Bakom-PKB), a

government- controlled Chinese association, reveals that 1,286

Chinese-Indonesians have reported to the organization that they were

victims of the riots.

Chairwoman Rosita Noor, saying some of the helpless victims were raped

and molested by the mobs, asked the Indonesian military to give security

guarantees to Chinese Indonesians.