What the critics has to say ?
Recorded Comments
Rape of Jakarta
May 1998"During the May riots, with regard to women there was mass rape and they were all Chinese (women). We met many victims and it was clear it was conducted in a widespread manner."
"Secondly it seems to have been conducted in an organized manner."
- Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women -
"I believe the May event can be better understood as state-sponsored political crime than a spontaneous racial riot. There could be elements of both, and perhaps many more. They might have competed in some ways and complemented one another in other ways. However, as a result of the long history of systematic and state-led racialisation, the public miss the complexity and tend to see only the racial aspects. It may have misrecognise the more serious crime, thus exonerating the real culprits, namely the state agents and their proxies."
- Ariel Heryanto -
"...but the idea that all Chinese are wealthy is an illusion. Most of the hundreds of shops destroyed in Chinatown were mom-and-pop businesses, and many of the owners couldn't afford plane tickets to Singapore, Australia and other, like the thousands who flocked to Jakarta's international airport today."
- Washington Post -
"Among the victim who were sexually abused, raped, were young ethnic Chinese girls. There is one rape case involving a 12 year-old. They were stripped naked, tortured and sexually abused beyond humanity. There was no security enforcement due to racial prejudice towards the ethnic Chinese."
- Women's Rights Monitoring Group in Indonesia -
"Some of the rapists said, `You must be raped because you are Chinese,' ..."
- The New York Times -