Conclusion ?

Vivian (not real name) will not forget that horrible day of 14 May - she was raped by seven men, and her younger sister was stabbed to death after being brutally raped. Since that tragedy, the 18-year-old Indonesian Chinese girl has been living in trauma and tears. Her parents are broken-hearted.

Vivian and her sister are not the only ethnic Chinese women atrociously attacked during the three days of rioting in Jakarta in May. Evidence has gradually come to light that hundreds of women, mostly Chinese, were assaulted, raped and some even killed in that period. From what they have documented, human rights and women’s groups in Indonesia say the violence appears to have been premeditated and organised. At least 168 rapes reported were committed by gangs, the groups claim, and of them, at least 20 women were killed or died after being raped. Some others committed suicides after their ordeals.

There is also increasing evidence suggesting that organised groups were involved in instigating attacks of arson and vandalism aimed largely at ethnic Chinese neighbourhoods. Rioters reportedly arrived at various targets in Jakarta simultaneously with gasoline bombs and other weapons and initiated the violence. Albert Hasibuan, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights, said human rights workers had talked with a rioter who said he had been recruited, briefed, paid and transported by unidentified men, who provided him and others with stones and gasoline bombs.

According to a group of ethnic Chinese, the Reformist for Ethnic Chinese Human Rights in Indonesia (RECHRI), several witness accounts stated that professional rioters came by trucks and used tools to open the iron doors of the Chinese properties. Looters who were the indigenous people lived nearby then came to take goods and all the belongings of the ethnic Chinese and burnt the houses. Neither the police nor the army tried to stop them. Local or international television stations videotaped all such scenes, the group said. The looters attacked only the ethnic Chinese properties; if a house had a sign indicating that it was belonged to the indigenous people, such as an indigenous wording or an Islamic symbol, the looters did not attack it, the group noted.

The attacks on ethnic Chinese women were also conducted in a systematic and organised manner. As in Vivian’s case, the mobs carried out floor-to-floor assaults on ethnic Chinese in her apartment building, with girls and women being gang-raped, men being beaten, some even being killed and homes being looted.

On 14 May alone, up to 468 women were attacked in their shops, homes and cars by groups of men in over 15 places, according to Rosita Noer, a doctor and human rights activist.

Due to the organised nature of many of the reported assaults and some physical descriptions of the attackers, aid workers said they suspected that some elements of the armed forces might have been involved. Some witnesses said they observed men with muscular builds and military haircuts, and one victim said she was raped by men who had a military uniform in their car.

‘Crime Against Humanity’

The reported attacks ranged from degrading and humiliating the women by making them to strip and perform callisthenics in public to repeatedly raping the victims and then throwing them into burning buildings. Victims were girls and women aged between 10 and 55, workers of human rights and women’s aid groups said.

"Some of the rapists said, ‘You must be raped because you are Chinese and non-Muslim.’" said Ita Nadia, who works at a crisis centre, Kalyanamitra.

Indonesian onlookers of the brutal acts like Tono, an office boy at a public relations company, dared not to help or try to stop the attacks in fear of their own safety.

Tono saw an ethnic Chinese girl being sexually assaulted in Kebon Jeruk, West Jakarta, when he was on his way home on 14 May.

"The girl was terrified. She was trapped and surrounded by a violent mass that was stripping her clothes off. Once her clothes were off, the people harassed her and threw her clothes here and there. The people were not satisfied, and they forced her to take off her bra and panties," he said.

Although the girl was begging and crying, Tono said he dared not to intervene as there were too many attackers.

Aid workers said most of the victims remained too traumatised to talk about their experiences and too terrified of reprisals to report their ordeals.

For example, an Indonesian Chinese woman in Bekasi area has suffered from mental disorder after being forced to strip naked and dance by a mob in her home on 15 May. According to a friend, after the incident the woman always lifts and fans her flared skirt up and says, "I want to dance...and be naked too! I’m not ashamed!" If there are male visitors, she will point at them and says, "There he is...who asked me to strip naked, there...it’s him who asked me to dance..."

Her husband was beaten and wounded when he tried to stop the gangsters while a neighbour who tried to help was stabbed to death. The couple’s house was burnt in the incident. However, the friend said the Chinese couple did not want their case to be publicised.

Attack instigators are even sending victims photographs of their rapes as a warning to keep silent, according to Marzuki Darusman, deputy chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights.

"This is the first time we are describing a violation in Indonesia as a crime against humanity - the codeword the United Nations used for ethnic cleansing in Bosnia," Marzuki told the press.

Aid workers have also been threatened for investigating and exposing the atrocities against ethnic Chinese women. Father Sandyawan Sumardi, head of the Volunteers for Humanity and the first to go public with news of systematic rapes, said someone had sent him a hand grenade in the mail as a warning.

Another aid worker said she received a telephone call in which a man said: "Do you know that a week ago we sent a grenade to Father Sandiyawan? Do you want more than the grenade we sent to Father Sandiyawan?"

As for surviving victims and their family members, Sita Kayam, a worker at a women’s aid centre, said she believed that hundreds of them were receiving physical or psychological help at hospitals in Jakarta.

Ita of Kalyanamitra said in one case an ethnic Chinese woman was admitted to psychiatric hospital after seeing her two younger sisters being raped by about 10 rioters and pushed from the third floor to the burning ground floor. Her two sisters were subsequently killed. Their mother, upon receiving the news, had a heart attack and died.

In another case, a housewife of Jalambar, West Jakarta, who has planned to flee with her two teenage daughters, told reporters that a couple were undergoing treatment at Bhakti Husada Hospital for deep psychological trauma as they could not accept the deaths of their three teenage girls at the family’s shop at Glodok business centre in West Jakarta on 13 May.

"Two of the girls threw themselves into the fire that gutted the shop after they failed to help their youngest sister, who was gang-raped by a mob," she recounted. Distraught, the young girl followed her sisters by jumping into the fire from the second floor.

‘Why Do People Keep Intimidating Us?’

The chaotic situation in Indonesia has forced many ethnic Chinese to flee the capital or even the country. Some who were badly in need of cash sold their cars, houses and furniture at low prices.

However, the ethnic Chinese have been criticised for being not nationalistic by leaving the country.

"This has nothing to do with nationalism," said Lily, who fled to Bali. "It is not foreigners, but our own fellow countrymen who attacked us. People who say that have no idea how horrible our experiences were."

Earlier in June, the Forum of Reform Entrepreneurs said about 110,000 Chinese Indonesian families had fled the country. About 80,000 of the families planned to return if the situation stabilised, 20,000 were undecided, and the rest had decided to move to Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong, the group’s spokesman Nazar Haroen said.

Deep concern prevails among the ethnic Chinese over their future, as they are the usual targets of mob violence during times of hardship in Indonesia. In fact, ethnic Chinese have always been discriminated, for example their identity cards are marked and they must carry proof of their ancestors’ conversion to Indonesian citizenship even if their families have been in the country for generations.

"The decision to prepare to leave Indonesia, the country where we were born and grew up, is not an easy choice," said Qin Yang Min Tze of South Jakarta who plans to leave with his wife and two daughters to China or the United States.

"Why do people keep intimidating us? We never feel we are Chinese because we were born in Indonesia and we are Indonesian citizens," one man was quoted by the press as saying.

Please, Help!

As the Indonesian authorities fail to provide substantial help and protection for them, many ethnic Chinese resort to the international community for assistance.

The RECHRI has appealed to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) for help and the setting up of a working group on minority ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.

They said in a letter to the UNCHR that their human rights, including freedom from fear, right to life, right to property, right for integrity and dignity of the person, have been violated.

"We are constantly in an alert situation because any time our life would be in danger as the indigenous people would come to loot, burn our properties and rape our daughters. The government of Indonesia doesn’t protect us as the current riots have shown. The army was very late to show up, and even if they showed up they were just watching and let the indigenous people loot the Chinese properties. In many cases, army just told the looters: ‘Just take the goods, don’t kill.’" the ethnic Chinese group said.

"To give you a more dramatic view," they noted, "a People Representative of Indonesia (MPR) Mr. Usman Lubis at a 25 May 1998 press conference in Medan (the third largest city) called on the government to register those ethnic Chinese who had been in the exodus to foreign countries during the riot. According to him, they have to be registered because those who left the country are not showing nationalism and loving to the country. He even called for evoking their business license and giving them to the indigenous people."

The group urged the UNCHR to:

1. Set up a working group to monitor the human rights of minority ethnic Chinese in Indonesia;

2. Condemn the Indonesian government and ask them to apologise for the sufferings of ethnic Chinese; and

3. Work together with the Indonesian National Commission on Human Rights to improve the human rights of ethnic Chinese in the country.

When Will Justice Come?

Earlier, about 20 leaders of major religions in Indonesia jointly urged the government "to take concrete steps to show its remorse towards this barbaric affair [of racial riots]."

"We also call on the government, the authorities and anyone who feels compelled to uphold justice to use all their power to terminate immediately all forms of behaviour that try to divide the nation by exploiting differences.

"Today, it is happening to people of Chinese descent. Unless we eliminate this, it will happen to other ethnic groups."

Those incited and spread the hatred that led to the riots should be tried and punished, the religious leaders said.

"Discrimination based on race, especially torture based on race, is an action that has degraded humanity and it is against justice," they noted.

Meanwhile, groups of non-governmental organisations, political parties and individuals in various countries and places including Hong Kong and Taiwan, which have a number of Chinese Indonesians, have protested against the violence inflicted on ethnic Chinese women in Indonesia. Even China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has expressed deep concern over the attacks.

Strongly condemned the systematic mass rapes and sexual assaults, one joint petition by women and human rights groups in Hong Kong said: "The Indonesian government is guilty of taking no action on organised, systematic rape and sexual abuse on Chinese Indonesian women and racial discrimination."

"We condemn this act of violation of women’s human rights and urge the Indonesian government to take steps to prevent further incidents from happening again."

Although the Indonesian government has set up a 19-member official team to investigate the riots, no ethnic Chinese are appointed to the group.

Many people remain sceptical over the government’s sincerity and ability in bringing those who masterminded and involved in the attacks to justice, as it is widely believed that the rioting was related to a struggle among key Indonesian power-holders and racial hatred was instigated to create opportune political and social conditions for a power redistribution at the top.

Under the present circumstances, international pressure thus becomes crucial to help pushing the Indonesian government to redress the wrong and the damages done to the victims and their families and to take active steps to end all forms of discrimination and violence against women and ethnic minorities in the country.

(Source: This article is compiled from information provided by the Social Welfare Guidance Foundation, which is campaigning to stop making the minorities the scapegoat in Indonesia, and press reports.)