Chinese Women in Indonesia Victims of Mass Rape During May Riots

Chinese Women in Indonesia Victims of Mass Rape During May Riots

It's just over a month since President Suharto was

ousted from power in Indonesia. The killing of six

students which sparked off the unrest has been

investigated and the perpetrators found. But

reports are now emerging of other atrocities that

were committed whilst Suharto was ousted from

power in Indonesia. Our Asia correspondent,

Matt Frei, reports:

Last month hundreds of journalists, including

myself, descended on the Indonesian capital,

Jakarta, to cover the rising wave of popular

unrest which finally swept President Suharto from

power. Most of our attentions were focused on

the demise of Asia's longest ruling dictator. He

was the story.

But behind closed doors something far more

sinister was taking place. The Chinese minority

has traditionally been the scapegoat in Indonesia.

But what happened on May the thirteenth and

fourteenth defied their own worst expectations.

Thiem Sentee, a Chinese hotel manager, used to

have a hotel located in the heart of Jakarta's

Chinatown until it was burned down by the mob

together with thousands of other Chinese-owned

shops and houses. He said he'd heard a story of

a woman being raped in front of her husband and

children. She took insecticide the second day

and couldn't be saved. Other women were

victims of gang rape, some of whom found the

trauma too much, preferring to commit suicide.

Many ethnic Chinese are Christians and it was at

church that the rape victims first overcame their

shame. As one woman spoke out another stood

up and told a similar story and then another. A

terrible realisation dawned on congregations in

Jakarta and elsewhere. The Chinese women had

become victims of what looked like a campaign

of mass rape. Swamped by appeals for help from

the churches the psychology department at

Jakarta University set up a forum to encourage

the women to speak out in public. None of them

dared but there were plenty of eyewitnesses. One

man described how he helped a mother and

three daughters escape the country.

On the fourteenth of May my friend's three

daughters were put on the back of a truck by a

group of men. They were repeatedly raped from

four in the afternoon until three in the morning.

The youngest was fourteen. The next day I drove

them to the airport. They escaped on a plane to

Singapore and then Australia.

Many of those who couldn't flee are still in

hospital, their minds scarred and their bodies

often horribly mutilated. One of their doctors said

the youngest victim had been eleven years old

and the eldest eighteen or nineteen. She knew of

at least four hundred cases of rape. In one

incident sixty-eight Chinese women and girls

were raped by groups of as many as ten men

who systematically worked through the floors of

an apartment block in a middle-class, residential

district. Frequently the victims were humiliated in

front of their Indonesian neighbours.

A psychologist, Christie Powandari, has set up a

crisis centre for the victims, some of whom had

been ordered to dance naked whilst people

clapped their hands as if they were animals.

According to him, rape is quite common but

mass rape like this is definitely not.

The unanswered question haunting the Chinese

community, still numb with fear, is who did this. A

number of victims have said that the men who

raped them had crew cuts and tattoos and that

they seemed to be drugged, or drunk. In the

rumour mill of Jakarta, some have pointed to the

same renegade units in the army which allegedly

encouraged the rioters and looters; possible, but

not proven. What is proven is the racism and

jealousy of many Indonesians towards their

relatively wealthy Chinese neighbours. Could the

rapes have been committed by ordinary people

venting their anger against a helpless minority? It

was a question that Christie Powandari was loath

to contemplate.

I don't think that Indonesian people, even when

they really hate Chinese, for example, can do that

- rape groups of twelve years old young girls. I

don't know. It's really unbelievable.

What we do know is this. Hundreds, perhaps

thousands of Chinese women were

systematically raped on two consecutive days in

May and so far the government of President

Habibie which has promised reforms and the

respect of human rights has done absolutely

nothing to find the perpetrators and punish them.