Silenced !

Was to testify to human rights group

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- A young ethnic Chinese activist who was counseling women raped during Indonesia's riots in May was found stabbed to death in her home, police said Saturday.

Human rights groups say that at least 168 women, mostly ethnic Chinese, were raped during the unrest in Indonesia, which killed 1,200 people and led to the resignation of President Suharto.

Several activists helping the victims or investigating the cases have complained they have received death threats.

But 18-year-old Martadinata Haryono, whose body was found Friday night by her father with stab wounds and a slashed neck, was the first volunteer to be killed, police said.

Haryono and her mother, Wiwin, both worked for Volunteers for Humanity, one of several such groups recently established to counsel ethnic Chinese victims of the unrest.

Kompas, Indonesia's largest newspaper, reported Saturday that Haryono and her mother were planning to help rape victims tell an international human rights group what had happened to them.

"This was so unfair. We just hope she wasn't killed because she and her mother were helping rape victims," said Ester Indahyani Jusuf Lubis, leader of Serambi Nusa Bangsa, a group formed in June to fight racial discrimination in Indonesia.

"People will now be afraid to tell anyone what happened during the riots. This is terrorizing for Indonesia's ethnic Chinese," she said in an interview.

Police said the assailant did not rob Haryono's home, located near a military complex in downtown Jakarta, but refused to speculate what had motivated the killing. They would not say whether she had been sexually assaulted.

Haryono, a student at Paskalis Catholic high school, had counseled at least four rape victims, the Jakarta Post reported.

On Saturday, dozens of people visited her house in a densely populated neighborhood of modest homes and open sewers, where some people still make money by raising chickens and pigeons.

Haryono's casket sat in one room adorned with flowers, burning incense, her photograph and a crucifix. Her parents were consoled by friends in an adjoining room.

Ethnic Chinese were targets

Indonesians of Chinese descent are widely resented by the country's Muslim majority for their wealth, their business acumen and their Buddhist and Christian religions.

They are the country's most powerful economic group, controlling about 70 percent of its private wealth and banking sectors.

During the rioting in May, which struck during Indonesia's worst economic crisis in 30 years, many businesses and homes of the ethnic Chinese minority were targeted by mobs.

Reports that mass rapes had occurred outraged Chinese communities around the world and resulted in calls for tough action by the governments of China and Taiwan.

Indonesia's government set up an independent inquiry into the reported sexual assaults. It confirmed that rapes had taken place during the riots, but it has yet to determine how many.

The military and police have repeatedly said they have no hard evidence that sexual assault was widespread. But that has left them open to criticism, especially from women's groups.

"Whatever motivated the killing, we see it as a form of terror against women activists," said Nursyahbani Katjasungkana, director of the Indonesian Women's Association for Justice. "The armed forces and police must do more to guarantee our safety."