Newsday [New York], Sunday, Jun 6, 2004, 4:07 AM EDT
At last, a haven from horror
BY ROBERT POLNER Staff Writer
It would be hard to imagine a life more difficult, or inspiring, than Anna Kwee's.
When rioting swept Indonesia's capital of Jakarta for three days in May 1998, a wave
of anti-Chinese sentiment caught Kwee and her sister. They were among 150 Chinese
women stripped, beaten and gang-raped, according to human rights groups, and the
sisters' hair salon was torched.
The pair's attackers, Kwee says, were men wearing military attire and shouting "Allah
Hu Akbar" or "God is Good," and the Indonesian words for "Kill Chinese."
"I have never been scared like this," Kwee told a psychologist for the humanitarian
organization Doctors of the World who evaluated her years later. "I felt my body didn't
have any bone. I was trembling."
The riots destroyed much of Jakarta's Chinese business area and killed up to 2,500.
The disturbances preceded by days the collapse of the General Suharto regime after
32 years in power. Suspicions fell on his supporters in the military.
Never vigorously investigated by the government, the violence added a barbaric
chapter to a long history of scapegoating of ethnic Chinese Christians, many wealthy,
in a predominantly Muslim land of 230 million people - a dynamic that experts say
has been aggravated by the U.S bombing of Afghanistan, given the influence of radical
Islamists in parts of Indonesia.
From bad to worse. Kwee, now 45 and living on Long Island, believes she narrowly
avoided being killed. To make prospects even worse for her, when she returned home
for the first time since her rape, after 14 days in a West Jakarta hospital, her husband
disowned her. He cut her off from their three children, sued for divorce and gained
custody of them, she says. Kwee, in fact, has not seen her children since then. Her
younger sister landed in a psychiatric hospital, rendered silent by the trauma of the
attacks.
Considering the near-death accounts of thousands of exiles from around the world
who apply for political asylum here each year - indeed, 1,549 Indonesians were
granted asylum in 1999 in the wake of the country's political instability, more than any
other nationals except Somalians - Kwee's story might have ended there.
But in an era of heightened scrutiny of immigrants and worries of another terror attack
in the United States, Kwee was exceptionally fortunate.
In what legal experts described as a rarity, a Manhattan immigration judge who had
rejected Kwee's bid for asylum in June 2003 reversed himself last month and ruled in
her favor. In the appeal, he heard convincing evidence of her fragile emotional state
and fear of returning to Indonesia.
Her new attorney, H. Raymond Fasano of Manhattan, who was referred by Bethel
Church of God in Flushing, where Kwee had worshipped, represented her pro-bono.
"When I lost the case the first time, I really couldn't take it," Kwee recalled, through a
translator. "I just felt like I wanted to commit suicide. When I won, I was so relieved. I
experienced many terrible things in Indonesia. I couldn't possibly go back."
Kwee's legal triumph also capped her 16 months in detention in correctional facilities
in Jamaica, N.Y., and York, Pa. She had been detained after returning from a trip to
Hong Kong to see her dying father and a stay with her brother in Jakarta to get free
medical care as an Indonesian citizen. The charge against her, which she did not
contest, was visa fraud - the result, she says, of a bogus stamp a travel agency put
on her documents.
A new life. Now, Kwee has taken the first steps toward a new life, with help from new
friends.
King Kullen, where Kwee worked as a sushi chef for three years before her detention,
has offered her a union job with full benefits in the meat department. She plans to
accept the position after she gets a Social Security card, and hopes also to study
hairdressing in her spare time.
A couple who shops at the store in Halesite, Sam and Faith Toporoff, became very
fond of Kwee and are letting her stay in their Huntington home.
Jean Marie Giamaro, a King Kullen employee, said Kwee inspires "not just like, but
love" in the people she meets, and is gifted in her ability to communicate without
words that life is precious and individuals are important to her. Plus, she likes to joke
around a lot.
Toporoff, a TV producer, calls his friend "extraordinarily adaptable. No one knows
what's in the dark recesses of someone else's mind, but Anna? Believe me, this
woman is very special. She's going to be fine," he said.
Copyright © 2004, Newsday, Inc.
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