New Threats Reported as Rapes in Indonesia Are Investigated
Related Articles
The New York Times: Crisis in Indonesia
By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia Human rights workers who are
investigating scores of organized gang
rapes during three days of rioting here in May say they and
the victims have been receiving
threats from unidentified men.
In interviews, the investigators said they had confirmed the
rapes of 168 women during the riots, of
whom 20 had died during or after the assaults. They said they
presumed that many other women
had either fled the city or were too traumatized to report their
rapes.
Some victims have been cowed into silence by threats or by
rumors of another round of attacks and
rapes, the investigators said. Others have committed suicide.
And they said they had heard reports
of additional rapes and sexual assaults in the weeks after the
riots.
Most of the attacks, like most of the looting and arson, were
directed against the ethnic Chinese
minority, which often becomes a scapegoat in times of conflict
or hardship in Indonesia.
The human rights workers said their continuing investigation had
reinforced their belief that the
rapes, some of them involving girls as young as 9, had been
organized and coordinated in the same
way as much of the looting and arson.
Nearly 1,200 lives were lost in Jakarta in the May 13-15 riots
that helped end President Suharto's
32-year rule on May 21, and thousands of buildings were burned
or badly damaged. Most of those
who died were looters trapped inside large department stores
that were set on fire by arsonists.
A growing body of reports from witnesses has confirmed that many
of the attacks on property and
residents, including the rapes, were instigated or carried out
by organized groups of up to a dozen
men. These groups traveled the city in vehicles, inciting crowds
to violence, according to reports
released by the Government's National Commission for Human
Rights and the Jakarta Social
Instititute, a private Catholic charity that is investigating
the riots.
Suspicion has fallen on the military or other security forces,
particularly after the military
acknowledged last week that members of its special forces had
been involved in kidnappings of
opposition activists in the weeks before the riots.
On Friday, about 100 women demonstrated outside the Defense
Ministry, demanding that the
military take responsibility for the rapes. They displayed a
poster depicting troops sexually
assaulting women and held up a banner that read, "Indonesia!
Republic of Fear, Republic of Terror,
Republic of Rape!"
The threats against workers at women's crisis centers and
against some victims who have called
the centers' hot lines also indicate the involvement of people
able to monitor their activities and
listen to their telephone conversations, said Ita F. Nadia, an
organizer of Volunteers for Humanity, a
private aid group.
"We have received telephone calls and anonymous letters
terrorizing our workers," she said. "They
say they will rape the females and castrate the males."
The Rev. Sandyawan Sumardi, who heads the private Jakarta Social
Institute, said he had also
received threats. In addition, he said, threats have been made
against witnesses, family members
and hospital workers who treated the victims.
Photographs purporting to show the victims of the rapes have
been circulating, some of them on the
Internet. Ms. Ita said she believed that these were not in fact
photographs of riot victims and that
they were intended to sow fear.
Because of fears that security forces were involved, victims
have avoided reporting the rapes to
the police, said Kamala Chandrakirana, a spokeswoman for Ms.
Ita's group, which now employs as
many as 300 volunteers.
At first the Government seemed to doubt the growing reports of
rapes, but after meeting with 25
representatives of women's groups earlier this month, President
B. J. Habibie set up a Government
task force to study their reports and issued a statement
condemning "this inhuman episode in the
history of our nation."
He selected his wife, Dr. Hasri Ainun Besari, who is a
physician, to be an adviser to the task force.
"At first he was saying, 'I don't want this case to be blown up
and give a bad name to the
Indonesian people,'" Ms. Kamala said. "He was not clear on it at
first. He was rambling about how
bad the economy was going to be unless he saved it."
But as he heard the women out, Ms. Kamala said, his face took on
a look of shock and he asked
them to draft a statement for him on his office computer. "On
behalf of the Government and the
nation, I condemn the simultaneous acts of violence during the
riots, including the violence
perpetrated against women," the statement read.
Among the incidents reported by the investigators is the case of
a 9-year-old girl who was gang
raped and mutilated and who later died in a hospital.
Another case involved a woman and her 12-year-old daughter who
were raped side by side in
their home by a group of men. When the woman's husband tried to
intervene, she said, the
attackers hanged him.