Selasa, 31 Juli 2007
Rabu, 25 Juli 2007
Indonesian Ethnic Chinese
http://www.fica.org/cs/voa-mayriot-en
DATE=6/26/98
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
NUMBER=5-40797
TITLE=INDONESIA/ ETHNIC CHINESE
BYLINE=LISA WEAVER
DATELINE=JAKARTA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: THE EXODUS OF ETHNIC CHINESE FROM INDONESIA FOLLOWING THE RIOTING THAT LED FORMER PRESIDENT SUHARTO TO STEP DOWN TOOK AWAY A THRIVING SECTOR OF SOCIETY, BUT ALSO AN ESTIMATED 15 BILLION DOLLARS. AS LISA WEAVER REPORTS FROM JAKARTA, THE CHINESE WHO REMAIN SAY THEY ARE LEFT FEELING VULNERABLE, WITH LITTLE HOPE THE FUTURE WILL BRING MUCH CHANGE.
TEXT: WU YAO YAO IS COMING BACK TO LIVE IN HIS APARTMENT, A MONTH AFTER THE HIGH RISE COMPLEX WHERE HE LIVES WAS PARTIALLY BURNED AND RANSACKED BY ANGRY MOBS.
YAO ACT
(IN ENGLISH) YEAH, IN FACT WE FEEL THAT THIS IS OUR COUNTRY, ONLY A MATTER OF FACT THAT A PART OF THE INDONESIAN PEOPLE, THEY HAVE A NEGATIVE THINKING THAT ALL THE CHINESE ARE RICH, ALL THE CHINESE HAVE A BETTER LIFE THAN THEM, YOU KNOW. I THINK THAT IS WRONG THINKING – NOT ALL THE CHINESE ARE RICH.
END ACT
MANY OF INDONESIA’S WEALTHY CHINESE FLED THE COUNTRY IN THE WAKE OF RIOTING THAT LEFT HUNDREDS OF STORES AND HOMES DESTROYED. MR. WU, LIKE MANY IN THE MIDDLE CLASS, IS STAYING. BUT HE SAYS IF RIOTS BREAK OUT AGAIN, HE WILL MOVE HIS FAMILY TO MALAYSIA OR SINGAPORE.
MR. WU AND HIS NEIGHBORS ARE EAGER TO CONVEY A DEGREE OF NORMALCY IN THE MIDST OF CONTINUED CHAOS. THEY ARE RELUCTANT TO TALK ABOUT THE SUBJECT THAT HITS A SENSITIVE CHORD IN THEIR COMMUNITY – THE ALLEGED SYSTEMATIC RAPES OF HUNDREDS OF CHINESE WOMEN – IN MANY CASES, IN FRONT OF THEIR LOVED ONES.
ANOTHER CHINESE RESIDENT OF JAKARTA, RITONG WIJAYA, SAYS THIS IS AN ISSUE WITH WHICH MANY PEOPLE ARE HAVING TROUBLE COMING TO GRIPS.
ACT RITONG WIJAYA IN CHINESE – FADE UNDER TRANSLATION
“THERE WERE A LOT OF RAPES, BUT FEW PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK ABOUT IT,” HE SAYS.
HE INSISTS THERE WERE NO RAPES IN HIS APARTMENT COMPLEX – THE MITRA BAHARI APARTMENTS IN NORTH JAKARTA – AN ASSERTION DISPUTED BY A MANAGER AND OTHER RESIDENTS.
SOME MITRA BAHARI RESIDENTS MOVED TO A NEARBY APARTMENT COMPLEX AFTER THE RIOTS. LIM SHU LIAN SAYS WHEN SHE SAW THE LOWER FLOORS BEING BURNED AND HEARD MOBS BREAKING IN, SHE ESCAPED THROUGH THE BACK OF HER SIXTH STORY APARTMENT. SHE SAYS SHE HEARD ABOUT MASS RAPES, BUT DOES NOT KNOW THE DETAILS.
ACT LIM SHU LIEN IN CHINESE – FADE UNDER TRANSLATION
“IT’S HARD TO SAY. EVERYTHING WAS SO CHAOTIC DURING THE RIOTS – INDONESIA IS CHAOTIC EVEN NOW,” SHE SAYS. “I LIVE HERE, AND I’M AFRAID. IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE. WHAT ABOUT THE NEXT TIME?”
NADIA FROM KALYNANAMITRA, A WOMENS’ SUPPORT GROUP, SAYS FEAR OF WHAT MAY HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE IS WHAT KEEPS WITNESSES AND VICTIMS SILENT. THE GROUP PLACED SEVERAL RAPE VICTIMS IN SAFE HOUSES AFTER THE RIOTS. SINCE THEN, NADIA SAYS SHE HAS RECEIVED THREATENING PHONE CALLS. A CATHOLIC PRIEST WHO ALSO HELPS RAPE VICTIMS REPORTS RECEIVING A BOX OF DUMMY HAND GRENADES IN THE MAIL.
NADIA ASSERTS THE RAPES, BURNING AND LOOTING WERE NOT RANDOM, BUT WERE ORGANIZED POLITICAL ACTS.
NADIA ACT
THE PATTERN OF HOW THEY ATTACK, HOW THEY BURN, IS THE SAME ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER PLACE. THERE WAS A GROUP OF MALES WHO TRAINED, I DON’T KNOW WITH WHOM, WHO HAVE A TASK TO BURN, TO ATTACK, TO RAPE THE CHINESE COMMUNITY.
END ACT
NADIA SAYS SHE KNOWS OF ONE OF THESE MEN – NOW IN HIDING – WHO SAYS HE WAS TRAINED BY ONE OF THE MILITARY’S SPECIAL FORCES REGIMENTS. ACTIVISTS WANT TO USE HIS TESTIMONY FOR AN INVESTIGATION THEY PLAN TO LAUNCH.
THE CHINESE PLAY AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY. TRADITIONALLY MERCHANTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS, THEIR ABSENCE HAS BEEN SORELY FELT. BUSINESSES HAVE SHUT DOWN AND MUCH NEEDED CAPITAL IS BEING DRAINED FROM THE COUNTRY. NOW SOME OF INDONESIA’S POWER ELITE IS TRYING TO LURE CHINESE CAPITAL BACK HOME.
ACT - PROMINENT COMMUNITY FIGURE READING A STATEMENT IN BAHASA INDONESIA
MUSLIM LEADER ABDURRANHAM WAHID RECENTLY JOINED A TOP INDONESIAN CHINESE BUSINESSMAN IN URGING THE SOME 120-THOUSAND ETHNIC CHINESE WHO REMAIN ABROAD TO RETURN.
THE ETHNIC CHINESE BUSINESSMAN, WILLIAM SEORWIDJAYA, FORMER OWNCER OF AN INDONESIAN CAR MANUFACTURER, SAYS IT IS IMPORTANT FOR THE RECOVERY OF THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY THEY RETURN.
SEORWIDJAYA ACT
I THINK FOR SURE, WE FOREIGN INVESTORS WHO WOULD LIKE TO INVEST IN INDONESIA WILL ALSO LOOK AT THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE FLEEING AWAY, TO THE SOONER THEY ARE COMING BACK THE BETTER FOR THE ECONOMIC SITUATION.
END ACT
MR. SEORWIDJAYA SAYS THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO REASSURE THE CHINESE THEY CAN COUNT ON PROTECTION. BUT HE ALSO SAYS PART OF THE REASON FOR THE RESENTMENT AGAINST THE CHINESE IS THAT THEY HAVE KEPT THEMSELVES SEPARATE FROM THE REST OF INDONESIAN SOCIETY. THE CHINESE MUST DO THEIR PART, HE SAYS, ADDING IT TAKES TWO HANDS TO CLAP.
IT MAY BE TOO SOON TO TELL WHETHER INDONESIA’S CHINESE COMMUNITY WILL FEEL WELCOMED WITH AN OPEN HAND – OR CONTINUE TO FEEL THREATENED WITH A CLOSED FIST. (SIGNED)
NEB/LW/GC/FC/MMK
26-Jun-98 9:47 AM EDT (1347 UTC) NNNN
Source: Voice of America
DATE=6/26/98
TYPE=BACKGROUND REPORT
NUMBER=5-40797
TITLE=INDONESIA/ ETHNIC CHINESE
BYLINE=LISA WEAVER
DATELINE=JAKARTA
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: THE EXODUS OF ETHNIC CHINESE FROM INDONESIA FOLLOWING THE RIOTING THAT LED FORMER PRESIDENT SUHARTO TO STEP DOWN TOOK AWAY A THRIVING SECTOR OF SOCIETY, BUT ALSO AN ESTIMATED 15 BILLION DOLLARS. AS LISA WEAVER REPORTS FROM JAKARTA, THE CHINESE WHO REMAIN SAY THEY ARE LEFT FEELING VULNERABLE, WITH LITTLE HOPE THE FUTURE WILL BRING MUCH CHANGE.
TEXT: WU YAO YAO IS COMING BACK TO LIVE IN HIS APARTMENT, A MONTH AFTER THE HIGH RISE COMPLEX WHERE HE LIVES WAS PARTIALLY BURNED AND RANSACKED BY ANGRY MOBS.
YAO ACT
(IN ENGLISH) YEAH, IN FACT WE FEEL THAT THIS IS OUR COUNTRY, ONLY A MATTER OF FACT THAT A PART OF THE INDONESIAN PEOPLE, THEY HAVE A NEGATIVE THINKING THAT ALL THE CHINESE ARE RICH, ALL THE CHINESE HAVE A BETTER LIFE THAN THEM, YOU KNOW. I THINK THAT IS WRONG THINKING – NOT ALL THE CHINESE ARE RICH.
END ACT
MANY OF INDONESIA’S WEALTHY CHINESE FLED THE COUNTRY IN THE WAKE OF RIOTING THAT LEFT HUNDREDS OF STORES AND HOMES DESTROYED. MR. WU, LIKE MANY IN THE MIDDLE CLASS, IS STAYING. BUT HE SAYS IF RIOTS BREAK OUT AGAIN, HE WILL MOVE HIS FAMILY TO MALAYSIA OR SINGAPORE.
MR. WU AND HIS NEIGHBORS ARE EAGER TO CONVEY A DEGREE OF NORMALCY IN THE MIDST OF CONTINUED CHAOS. THEY ARE RELUCTANT TO TALK ABOUT THE SUBJECT THAT HITS A SENSITIVE CHORD IN THEIR COMMUNITY – THE ALLEGED SYSTEMATIC RAPES OF HUNDREDS OF CHINESE WOMEN – IN MANY CASES, IN FRONT OF THEIR LOVED ONES.
ANOTHER CHINESE RESIDENT OF JAKARTA, RITONG WIJAYA, SAYS THIS IS AN ISSUE WITH WHICH MANY PEOPLE ARE HAVING TROUBLE COMING TO GRIPS.
ACT RITONG WIJAYA IN CHINESE – FADE UNDER TRANSLATION
“THERE WERE A LOT OF RAPES, BUT FEW PEOPLE WHO WILL TALK ABOUT IT,” HE SAYS.
HE INSISTS THERE WERE NO RAPES IN HIS APARTMENT COMPLEX – THE MITRA BAHARI APARTMENTS IN NORTH JAKARTA – AN ASSERTION DISPUTED BY A MANAGER AND OTHER RESIDENTS.
SOME MITRA BAHARI RESIDENTS MOVED TO A NEARBY APARTMENT COMPLEX AFTER THE RIOTS. LIM SHU LIAN SAYS WHEN SHE SAW THE LOWER FLOORS BEING BURNED AND HEARD MOBS BREAKING IN, SHE ESCAPED THROUGH THE BACK OF HER SIXTH STORY APARTMENT. SHE SAYS SHE HEARD ABOUT MASS RAPES, BUT DOES NOT KNOW THE DETAILS.
ACT LIM SHU LIEN IN CHINESE – FADE UNDER TRANSLATION
“IT’S HARD TO SAY. EVERYTHING WAS SO CHAOTIC DURING THE RIOTS – INDONESIA IS CHAOTIC EVEN NOW,” SHE SAYS. “I LIVE HERE, AND I’M AFRAID. IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE. WHAT ABOUT THE NEXT TIME?”
NADIA FROM KALYNANAMITRA, A WOMENS’ SUPPORT GROUP, SAYS FEAR OF WHAT MAY HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE IS WHAT KEEPS WITNESSES AND VICTIMS SILENT. THE GROUP PLACED SEVERAL RAPE VICTIMS IN SAFE HOUSES AFTER THE RIOTS. SINCE THEN, NADIA SAYS SHE HAS RECEIVED THREATENING PHONE CALLS. A CATHOLIC PRIEST WHO ALSO HELPS RAPE VICTIMS REPORTS RECEIVING A BOX OF DUMMY HAND GRENADES IN THE MAIL.
NADIA ASSERTS THE RAPES, BURNING AND LOOTING WERE NOT RANDOM, BUT WERE ORGANIZED POLITICAL ACTS.
NADIA ACT
THE PATTERN OF HOW THEY ATTACK, HOW THEY BURN, IS THE SAME ONE PLACE TO ANOTHER PLACE. THERE WAS A GROUP OF MALES WHO TRAINED, I DON’T KNOW WITH WHOM, WHO HAVE A TASK TO BURN, TO ATTACK, TO RAPE THE CHINESE COMMUNITY.
END ACT
NADIA SAYS SHE KNOWS OF ONE OF THESE MEN – NOW IN HIDING – WHO SAYS HE WAS TRAINED BY ONE OF THE MILITARY’S SPECIAL FORCES REGIMENTS. ACTIVISTS WANT TO USE HIS TESTIMONY FOR AN INVESTIGATION THEY PLAN TO LAUNCH.
THE CHINESE PLAY AN ACTIVE ROLE IN THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY. TRADITIONALLY MERCHANTS AND BUSINESS OWNERS, THEIR ABSENCE HAS BEEN SORELY FELT. BUSINESSES HAVE SHUT DOWN AND MUCH NEEDED CAPITAL IS BEING DRAINED FROM THE COUNTRY. NOW SOME OF INDONESIA’S POWER ELITE IS TRYING TO LURE CHINESE CAPITAL BACK HOME.
ACT - PROMINENT COMMUNITY FIGURE READING A STATEMENT IN BAHASA INDONESIA
MUSLIM LEADER ABDURRANHAM WAHID RECENTLY JOINED A TOP INDONESIAN CHINESE BUSINESSMAN IN URGING THE SOME 120-THOUSAND ETHNIC CHINESE WHO REMAIN ABROAD TO RETURN.
THE ETHNIC CHINESE BUSINESSMAN, WILLIAM SEORWIDJAYA, FORMER OWNCER OF AN INDONESIAN CAR MANUFACTURER, SAYS IT IS IMPORTANT FOR THE RECOVERY OF THE INDONESIAN ECONOMY THEY RETURN.
SEORWIDJAYA ACT
I THINK FOR SURE, WE FOREIGN INVESTORS WHO WOULD LIKE TO INVEST IN INDONESIA WILL ALSO LOOK AT THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE FLEEING AWAY, TO THE SOONER THEY ARE COMING BACK THE BETTER FOR THE ECONOMIC SITUATION.
END ACT
MR. SEORWIDJAYA SAYS THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO REASSURE THE CHINESE THEY CAN COUNT ON PROTECTION. BUT HE ALSO SAYS PART OF THE REASON FOR THE RESENTMENT AGAINST THE CHINESE IS THAT THEY HAVE KEPT THEMSELVES SEPARATE FROM THE REST OF INDONESIAN SOCIETY. THE CHINESE MUST DO THEIR PART, HE SAYS, ADDING IT TAKES TWO HANDS TO CLAP.
IT MAY BE TOO SOON TO TELL WHETHER INDONESIA’S CHINESE COMMUNITY WILL FEEL WELCOMED WITH AN OPEN HAND – OR CONTINUE TO FEEL THREATENED WITH A CLOSED FIST. (SIGNED)
NEB/LW/GC/FC/MMK
26-Jun-98 9:47 AM EDT (1347 UTC) NNNN
Source: Voice of America
Chinese Women in Indonesia Victims of Mass Rape During May Riots
http://www.fica.org/cs/bbc-mayriot02-en
From:BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/eastasiatoday/ea980623.htm
#story4
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.
From:BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/eastasiatoday/ea980623.htm
#story4
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.
UK Ethnic Chinese Urged Back to Indonesia
http://www.fica.org/cs/bbc-mayriot01-en
Tuesday, June 23, 1998 P
ublished at 15:53 GMT 16:53
UK Ethnic Chinese urged back to Indonesia
Indonesia feels the pain of increasing poverty A Muslim leader and a prominent ethnic Chinese businessman have urged ethnic Chinese who fled last month's rioting in Indonesia to return home to help revive the stricken economy.
In a joint statement, Abdurrahman Wahid and William Suryajaya also called on the Indonesian government to guarantee the safety of the ethnic Chinese, who were targeted in the unrest in Jakarta and elsewhere.
"Their return is very important in the effort to help the recovery of the national economy. So will you please return, because we need you to revive our economy," said Abdurrahman Wahid, chairman of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama.
While the ethnic Chinese make up only about 3% of the country's 200 million-strong population, they controlled almost three quarters of the economy, and were often resented for their wealth by the indigenous Muslim majority.
Tens of thousands have fled the rioting that has swept over the country.
William Suryajaya, founder of the country's biggest car manufacturer Astra International, said he was optimistic the Chinese would return when they felt secure enough to run their businesses.
"We must understand they are still experiencing trauma over the events of May 13 and 14 in which the ethnic Chinese, in particular, became the target of looting, raping and killing," he said.
'Systematic rape' of ethnic Chinese women
The appeal came as further details emerged of the rape of hundreds of ethnic Chinese women during the rioting.
The ethnic Chinese were the main focus of the Indonesian violence. Many died as their shops were burned to the ground.
Reports are now emerging that rioters also systematically raped women and girls as they went from house to house, looting and burning.
Women's groups said there was little or no army or police protection for the Chinese, and that some of the women have since committed suicide.
The Indonesian Women's Affairs Minister Tuti Allawiyah said she has not received accurate data of the numbers who were raped.
"It seems that the rape victims are keeping their cases secret and that we have difficulties unveiling them," she said.
An ethnic Chinese hotel manager, Lim Sian Tie, said many women had been gang raped, and were too traumatised to talk about it.
"The trauma is so unbearable, they don't want to see anybody. That is quite understandable.
"If they are known to have been gang raped they would prefer to commit suicide," he said.
Tuesday, June 23, 1998 P
ublished at 15:53 GMT 16:53
UK Ethnic Chinese urged back to Indonesia
Indonesia feels the pain of increasing poverty A Muslim leader and a prominent ethnic Chinese businessman have urged ethnic Chinese who fled last month's rioting in Indonesia to return home to help revive the stricken economy.
In a joint statement, Abdurrahman Wahid and William Suryajaya also called on the Indonesian government to guarantee the safety of the ethnic Chinese, who were targeted in the unrest in Jakarta and elsewhere.
"Their return is very important in the effort to help the recovery of the national economy. So will you please return, because we need you to revive our economy," said Abdurrahman Wahid, chairman of Indonesia's largest Muslim organisation, Nahdlatul Ulama.
While the ethnic Chinese make up only about 3% of the country's 200 million-strong population, they controlled almost three quarters of the economy, and were often resented for their wealth by the indigenous Muslim majority.
Tens of thousands have fled the rioting that has swept over the country.
William Suryajaya, founder of the country's biggest car manufacturer Astra International, said he was optimistic the Chinese would return when they felt secure enough to run their businesses.
"We must understand they are still experiencing trauma over the events of May 13 and 14 in which the ethnic Chinese, in particular, became the target of looting, raping and killing," he said.
'Systematic rape' of ethnic Chinese women
The appeal came as further details emerged of the rape of hundreds of ethnic Chinese women during the rioting.
The ethnic Chinese were the main focus of the Indonesian violence. Many died as their shops were burned to the ground.
Reports are now emerging that rioters also systematically raped women and girls as they went from house to house, looting and burning.
Women's groups said there was little or no army or police protection for the Chinese, and that some of the women have since committed suicide.
The Indonesian Women's Affairs Minister Tuti Allawiyah said she has not received accurate data of the numbers who were raped.
"It seems that the rape victims are keeping their cases secret and that we have difficulties unveiling them," she said.
An ethnic Chinese hotel manager, Lim Sian Tie, said many women had been gang raped, and were too traumatised to talk about it.
"The trauma is so unbearable, they don't want to see anybody. That is quite understandable.
"If they are known to have been gang raped they would prefer to commit suicide," he said.
How One Jakarta Shop Owner Confronts Prejudice and Death
http://www.fica.org/cs/wp-mayriot-en
For Indonesia's Ethnic Chinese, A New Era Revives Old Hatreds
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/16/052l-061698-idx.html
How One Jakarta Shop Owner Confronts Prejudice and Death
By Cindy ShinerSpecial to The Washington PostTuesday, June 16, 1998; Page A23
JAKARTA, Indonesia�Since the fall of President Suharto last month, many Indonesians have begun to dream of a brighter future for themselves and their families.
But not Chairul, 44, an ethnic Chinese shopkeeper. Chairul's wife and two teenage daughters -- his only children -- burned to death in the widespread rioting that swept through Jakarta after four student activists at Trisakti University were killed by government troops. The May 12 violence led to Suharto's resignation after 32 years in power.
"If the students of Trisakti were the heroes of reform, my family was the victim of reform," Chairul said from the apartment above his shop that he now shares with other members of his extended family.
Chairul was in another part of town when the small restaurant his wife ran and the apartment above it were set ablaze by rioters targeting the businesses of the ethnic Chinese minority. Initially, only the bodies of his wife and one daughter were found by authorities. Chairul returned to the charred neighborhood the next day and discovered, against hope, the remains of his other daughter. He buried them all in a common grave.
Chairul and others of Chinese descent are widely resented by Indonesia's Muslim majority for their wealth, their business acumen and their religion. They are the country's most powerful economic group, controlling about 70 percent of Indonesia's private wealth and much of its retail and banking sectors.
But the role ethnic Chinese will play in the future is uncertain. Many say the trauma they suffered over the last few weeks makes it unlikely they will rush back to help the nation pull itself out of its current economic crisis. They sense little prospect that the country's prejudiced attitudes will change any time soon. In fact, many fear the resentment will only deepen as Indonesians seek to dismantle the corrupt Suharto patronage system which benefited a select group of Chinese enterprises..
"I think the Chinese conglomerates have to realize that the change, this reformation, is not going to be the same again as the past, so I think they better prepare themselves to make clean business, with no collusion, and rely on their professionalism, not based on privilege and collusion," said Fadhli Zon, a Muslim intellectual. "Otherwise, they cannot do any business here."
Muslim advisers to the new president, B.J. Habibie, have expressed support for an affirmative action program similar to one that was implemented in Malaysia after anti-Chinese riots there in 1969. The system required corporations to hire a quota of indigenous Malaysians and reduced the presence of Chinese students at Malaysian universities, where they had held a disproportionate number of seats.
But the much smaller Chinese community here fears that such a program would go well beyond affirmative action, institutionalizing Indonesia's racism and aggravating ethnic tensions.
Over the years, the Chinese minority has already been forced to give up their Chinese names, their language, their schools and their traditions. While favoring a few Chinese friends and supporters, Suharto aggressively pursued a policy of forging a common national identify among his country's 200 million people -- a policy that included a ban on Chinese-language books and reading material and public celebration of the Chinese New Year.
People like Chairul and his brother, Thomas, are typical of the Chinese minority. After five generations of intermarriage, they have little Chinese blood, but what ancestry remains is enough for them to be considered Chinese. Religion also sets them apart: while most Chinese are Christians or Buddhists, 90 percent of Indonesians are Muslim.
"I married an Indonesian, but our kids are called Chinese," said Thomas, 37, who is Muslim. "Even on their identity cards it says they are Chinese. All of our documents say 'Chinese.' I feel discriminated against by the government and society as well."
Even before last month's rioting, most ethnic Chinese had moved their savings out of the country, according to Sofjan Wanandi, chairman of the Gemala Group conglomerate, one of Indonesia's largest, and a spokesman for the Chinese community. Wanandi also estimated that 60,000 Chinese fled the country and are not expected back any time soon.
"A lot of the Indonesian Chinese will go someplace else and have something outside of Indonesia," Wanandi said. "That will impact a lot of things. The economic normalization will be much slower and the people will suffer more and more."
The violence last month claimed at least 500 lives and left thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed. The Chinese community is estimated to have suffered material losses of at least $3 billion.
President Habibie toured the charred remains of Chinatown a few days after the rioting, the first visit by an official to a Chinese riot-struck area in decades. He pledged support for the community but stopped short of condemning the violence or announcing plans for how to help local businesses recover.
"I cannot and will not make any promises," he said. "I am not able to do so because once I have made a promise I will have to fulfill it. One thing that I promise you is that I will take care of you all."
Chairul and his brother were unimpressed. "We want to see proof that the government really cares about the situation and wants to change the situation and help the families who suffered," Thomas said.
Indonesia's chief economic minister, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, put the burden on the Chinese to lift themselves out of trouble, urging them to draw on the tight sense of community that has caused them to be ostracized.
"We have had this kind of experience in the past and usually Indonesians of Chinese descent can overcome this problem for themselves," he told reporters. "They have networks. What they need is assurance that they will be guaranteed safety and security, that they will be treated as Indonesians. That is something we can assure them."
Chinese suffering persecution in their own country centuries ago fled to Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia and established a niche for themselves as shrewd traders. But their status changed once the Dutch arrived here 400 years ago and established a semi-apartheid state that segregated the population into three groups: Europeans, foreign Orientals and indigenous.
The Dutch did, however, employ a few Chinese as trading partners, establishing the system of patronage that survives today. The Chinese were allowed to grow and trade in opium and sugar cane and to run pawn shops in exchange for tax payments.
Suharto had a decidedly mixed record in his relationship with Indonesia's ethnic Chinese. Economically, he relied upon them to rebuild the country after he ousted President Sukarno in 1965. But during the unrest following the coup, there were many Chinese who were suspected of being linked to the government of China and fell victim to an anti-communist purge that included a ban on the use of written Chinese characters or the involvement of ethnic Chinese in the political life of the country.
Suharto's policies reflected the widespread suspicion among Indonesians about the loyalties of the Chinese, who are often accused of using Indonesia to get rich while investing their capital abroad. These suspicions were reinforced by the activities of the few wealthy Chinese close to the Suharto government, who were widely suspected of obtaining government favors in return for financial favors to the Suharto family.
"The Chinese also have to change their attitude," said Wanandi. "In the past, it was always that you had to have protection whether being close to the president, the ministers or the generals. They monopolized the whole thing because they had to pay. The Chinese have been used by the authorities as well."
For Indonesia's Ethnic Chinese, A New Era Revives Old Hatreds
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-06/16/052l-061698-idx.html
How One Jakarta Shop Owner Confronts Prejudice and Death
By Cindy ShinerSpecial to The Washington PostTuesday, June 16, 1998; Page A23
JAKARTA, Indonesia�Since the fall of President Suharto last month, many Indonesians have begun to dream of a brighter future for themselves and their families.
But not Chairul, 44, an ethnic Chinese shopkeeper. Chairul's wife and two teenage daughters -- his only children -- burned to death in the widespread rioting that swept through Jakarta after four student activists at Trisakti University were killed by government troops. The May 12 violence led to Suharto's resignation after 32 years in power.
"If the students of Trisakti were the heroes of reform, my family was the victim of reform," Chairul said from the apartment above his shop that he now shares with other members of his extended family.
Chairul was in another part of town when the small restaurant his wife ran and the apartment above it were set ablaze by rioters targeting the businesses of the ethnic Chinese minority. Initially, only the bodies of his wife and one daughter were found by authorities. Chairul returned to the charred neighborhood the next day and discovered, against hope, the remains of his other daughter. He buried them all in a common grave.
Chairul and others of Chinese descent are widely resented by Indonesia's Muslim majority for their wealth, their business acumen and their religion. They are the country's most powerful economic group, controlling about 70 percent of Indonesia's private wealth and much of its retail and banking sectors.
But the role ethnic Chinese will play in the future is uncertain. Many say the trauma they suffered over the last few weeks makes it unlikely they will rush back to help the nation pull itself out of its current economic crisis. They sense little prospect that the country's prejudiced attitudes will change any time soon. In fact, many fear the resentment will only deepen as Indonesians seek to dismantle the corrupt Suharto patronage system which benefited a select group of Chinese enterprises..
"I think the Chinese conglomerates have to realize that the change, this reformation, is not going to be the same again as the past, so I think they better prepare themselves to make clean business, with no collusion, and rely on their professionalism, not based on privilege and collusion," said Fadhli Zon, a Muslim intellectual. "Otherwise, they cannot do any business here."
Muslim advisers to the new president, B.J. Habibie, have expressed support for an affirmative action program similar to one that was implemented in Malaysia after anti-Chinese riots there in 1969. The system required corporations to hire a quota of indigenous Malaysians and reduced the presence of Chinese students at Malaysian universities, where they had held a disproportionate number of seats.
But the much smaller Chinese community here fears that such a program would go well beyond affirmative action, institutionalizing Indonesia's racism and aggravating ethnic tensions.
Over the years, the Chinese minority has already been forced to give up their Chinese names, their language, their schools and their traditions. While favoring a few Chinese friends and supporters, Suharto aggressively pursued a policy of forging a common national identify among his country's 200 million people -- a policy that included a ban on Chinese-language books and reading material and public celebration of the Chinese New Year.
People like Chairul and his brother, Thomas, are typical of the Chinese minority. After five generations of intermarriage, they have little Chinese blood, but what ancestry remains is enough for them to be considered Chinese. Religion also sets them apart: while most Chinese are Christians or Buddhists, 90 percent of Indonesians are Muslim.
"I married an Indonesian, but our kids are called Chinese," said Thomas, 37, who is Muslim. "Even on their identity cards it says they are Chinese. All of our documents say 'Chinese.' I feel discriminated against by the government and society as well."
Even before last month's rioting, most ethnic Chinese had moved their savings out of the country, according to Sofjan Wanandi, chairman of the Gemala Group conglomerate, one of Indonesia's largest, and a spokesman for the Chinese community. Wanandi also estimated that 60,000 Chinese fled the country and are not expected back any time soon.
"A lot of the Indonesian Chinese will go someplace else and have something outside of Indonesia," Wanandi said. "That will impact a lot of things. The economic normalization will be much slower and the people will suffer more and more."
The violence last month claimed at least 500 lives and left thousands of buildings damaged or destroyed. The Chinese community is estimated to have suffered material losses of at least $3 billion.
President Habibie toured the charred remains of Chinatown a few days after the rioting, the first visit by an official to a Chinese riot-struck area in decades. He pledged support for the community but stopped short of condemning the violence or announcing plans for how to help local businesses recover.
"I cannot and will not make any promises," he said. "I am not able to do so because once I have made a promise I will have to fulfill it. One thing that I promise you is that I will take care of you all."
Chairul and his brother were unimpressed. "We want to see proof that the government really cares about the situation and wants to change the situation and help the families who suffered," Thomas said.
Indonesia's chief economic minister, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, put the burden on the Chinese to lift themselves out of trouble, urging them to draw on the tight sense of community that has caused them to be ostracized.
"We have had this kind of experience in the past and usually Indonesians of Chinese descent can overcome this problem for themselves," he told reporters. "They have networks. What they need is assurance that they will be guaranteed safety and security, that they will be treated as Indonesians. That is something we can assure them."
Chinese suffering persecution in their own country centuries ago fled to Southeast Asian nations such as Indonesia and established a niche for themselves as shrewd traders. But their status changed once the Dutch arrived here 400 years ago and established a semi-apartheid state that segregated the population into three groups: Europeans, foreign Orientals and indigenous.
The Dutch did, however, employ a few Chinese as trading partners, establishing the system of patronage that survives today. The Chinese were allowed to grow and trade in opium and sugar cane and to run pawn shops in exchange for tax payments.
Suharto had a decidedly mixed record in his relationship with Indonesia's ethnic Chinese. Economically, he relied upon them to rebuild the country after he ousted President Sukarno in 1965. But during the unrest following the coup, there were many Chinese who were suspected of being linked to the government of China and fell victim to an anti-communist purge that included a ban on the use of written Chinese characters or the involvement of ethnic Chinese in the political life of the country.
Suharto's policies reflected the widespread suspicion among Indonesians about the loyalties of the Chinese, who are often accused of using Indonesia to get rich while investing their capital abroad. These suspicions were reinforced by the activities of the few wealthy Chinese close to the Suharto government, who were widely suspected of obtaining government favors in return for financial favors to the Suharto family.
"The Chinese also have to change their attitude," said Wanandi. "In the past, it was always that you had to have protection whether being close to the president, the ministers or the generals. They monopolized the whole thing because they had to pay. The Chinese have been used by the authorities as well."
An Old Scourge of War Becomes Its Latest Crime
http://www.fica.org/cs/nyt-mayriot02-en
The New York Times
June 14, 1998
An Old Scourge of War Becomes Its Latest Crime
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
UNITED NATIONS – They strike without warning, bringing terror to an apartment in Algeria, a Chinese shop in Indonesia, a squalid refugee encampment in Africa or a Balkan farming village under siege. They are shadowy men with causes so blinding and hatreds so deep that they have transformed modern warfare into orgies of primordial savagery – raping, brutalizing, humiliating, slashing and hacking women and girls to death.
More civilians than soldiers are being maimed and killed in the wars of nationalism and ethnicity that are the hallmark of the century’s end, wars fought in neighborhoods rather than battlefields.
More to the point, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the new style of warfare is often aimed specifically at women and is defined by a view of premeditated, organized sexual assault as a tactic in terrorizing and humiliating a civilian population. In some cases the violators express a motive that seems to have more in common with the tactics of ancient marauding hordes than with the 20th century – achieving forced pregnancy and thus poisoning the womb of the enemy.
International attention first focused on the use of rape as a tactic of warfare in Bosnia, where a U.N. commission and human rights groups found that ethnic Serb paramilitary groups had systematically tolerated or encouraged the raping of Bosnian Muslim women as part of the effort to drive Muslims from their homes and villages between 1991 and 1995.
Rape was also employed by Hutu troops against Tutsi women in the genocidal campaign Hutu leaders conducted in Rwanda in 1994. Last year, women who have identified with secular culture in Algeria accused desperate rebels fighting in the name of Islamic revolution of kidnapping them and making them sex slaves.
In Indonesia, reports are surfacing that suggest members of the security forces may have been among the men who raped ethnic Chinese women during rioting last month.
And in the Balkans, Serbs are again emptying towns of a rival ethnic group – this time Albanians in Kosovo – and human rights and women’s groups are monitoring the growing violence for the possibility that rape will again be one of the techniques.
None of this is the essentially random rape that traditionally follows conquest, intolerable though that is; it is different even from forcing conquered women to be prostitutes for the victors, as Japan did in Korea during World War II.
The difference is that in all four recent cases, sexual degradation and intimidation – often public – seem to have been used as a strategy of ethnic or religious conflict itself.
This use of rape as a premeditated act of warfare is challenging anew the efforts by nations of the world to organize effectively to prevent and punish crimes against humanity, a monumental task that moves into new territory tomorrow with the opening of a treaty conference in Rome to create the world’s first international criminal court.
Largely because of the systematic use of sexual assault in ethnic wars in the Balkans and Rwanda, the court is expected to rank rape as an internationally recognized war crime for the first time in history, alongside violence against noncombatants, mistreatment of prisoners, torture and other unusual punishments.
Widney Brown, an advocate with the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, echoed other experts when she said that rape “has probably been an issue in every major conflict, but what happened in Bosnia, particularly with the creation of the rape camps, really brought it to light.”
In the Balkans, where soldiers of every faction were accused of rape, the discovery of areas where Serbian soldiers confined Bosnian Muslim women to be raped shocked many. “In Yugoslavia rape was a part of ethnic cleansing, because the message that you got was if you stayed, the men would be murdered and the women would be raped,” Ms. Brown said.
“That was followed very quickly by what happened in Rwanda, where we have similar widespread allegations of rape and mutilation,” she added. “In fact, part of the preliminary campaign that created the atmosphere that allowed the genocide to happen was the demonization of Tutsi women as oversexualized creatures who were seductresses. It’s not surprising that during the conflict they were subjected to rape, and a lot of sexual mutilation. Mutilation is another way of saying, ‘We don’t perceive of this person as a human being.’ "
For about five years now, ad hoc tribunals have been hearing allegations of war crimes, first in the Balkans and later in Rwanda, and these tribunals have already decided to consider rape a war crime in those conflicts. Since they have been serving as small-scale models for the permanent international court that is just being formed, that court is expected to follow suit.
“These tribunals were literally forced to pay attention to a series of petitions and pressures from women’s organizations demanding that rape be recognized,” said Felice Gaer, an expert on human rights and international organizations for the American Jewish Committee. Ms. Gaer said that ultimately the support of Justice Richard Goldstone, the first war crimes prosecutor for the Balkans and Rwanda, succeeded in elevating sex crimes to the level of genocide and crimes against humanity.
This was the first step taken by nations trying to tackle collectively this new scourge of war. But women are drawing up a longer list of gender-related crimes in wartime, and promise a battle to have them recognized by the International Criminal Court.
Ken Franzblau, who tracks the sexual exploitation of women for Equality Now, a New York-based organization that aids women in poor nations and immigrant women here, said rape is so widespread now because it is so effective in ethnic wars.
“It has such devastating effects on communities, particularly in traditional societies or very religious communities where the virginity and the fidelity of women can be central to the makeup of that society,” he said. Rape is a psychological grenade thrown into the middle of daily life to provoke maximum terror. “That’s why you see a fair number of these rapes committed in front of family members of the girls or women involved,” he said.
Some analysts believe that the fast pace of international communications today may be a factor in the rapid recurrence of the use of rape as a tactic of war in such widely separate parts of the world. But if that is true, it is also evident that rapid international communication has played a role in stirring international outrage about the tactic.
Over the last decade, there have been significant changes among the vulnerable women themselves. Women who were the victims of sexual abuse in the name of ethnic purity, nationalism and sometimes religious zeal have begun to speak out, often aided by human rights organizations and women’s crisis centers. For many, this has been a revolutionary change.
“Lots of women just committed suicide in the past,” said Charlotte Bunch executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers. “That’s one very clear thing that’s beginning to emerge now. In this decade, the outrage that women have been able to raise about the issue means that people are reporting it. But the truth is that there is also a backlash about women speaking out. There may be some moments before we reach a point where there is enough outrage to get the phenomenon under control.”
The phenomenon takes human form in a number of recent accounts reported by journalists. Take the story of Nawal Fathi, who was captured by militants in Algeria in 1996, made into a sex slave and raped by a score of men before being rescued by government troops. A psychiatrist who treated her said that despite a year of medical treatment, Ms. Fathi committed suicide at the age of 24 last year.
In Jakarta, aid workers were quoted last week as saying that hundreds of ethnic Chinese women had been sexually assaulted during the looting of Chinese neighborhoods, apparently by organized gangs that may have had links to security forces. “Some of the attackers said, ‘You must be raped because you are Chinese and non-Muslim,’ " one woman recalled. Again, a number of women have killed themselves rather than live in shame.
Although militants in Algeria and roving gangs of rapists in Indonesia are Muslims, the phenomenon is probably not related to religion, though radical religious views may provide justification to an elemental misogyny.
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan, for example, has repressed women but its holy warriors have not abused them sexually, as their predecessors in the Mujahedeen armies were frequently accused of doing, Afghan women say.
Roman Catholics butchered other Roman Catholics in Rwanda and Burundi. Sex slaves are also a hallmark of the vaguely evangelical Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Burmese troops in Myanmar, a Buddhist country, are accused in a new report from the human-rights group Earthrights of using rape as a weapon against women from 20 or more ethnic minorities or student groups that oppose the military regime.
Because women displaced by ethnic warfare or other forms of mass violence are often not safe even in refugee camps – or arrive there pregnant through rape – United Nations relief agencies and some private groups have begun to offer gynecological services and the “morning after” pill, which prevents conception.
Although this practice has been sharply criticized by anti-abortion groups in the United States, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and others have continued to provide help to abused women.
At Equality Now, Franzblau said the kind of sexual abuse that took place in Bosnia, where Serb rapes of Muslim women were numerous and intense personal hatred was directed at neighbors, not some distant stranger at an enemy gun emplacement, makes the impact much worse and stokes the fires for the next round of strife.
“That’s why it is going to be very difficult to reconcile these communities,” he said. “How can you move families back to homes where a mother or daughter or sister was raped by a next-door neighbor?”
The New York Times
June 14, 1998
An Old Scourge of War Becomes Its Latest Crime
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
UNITED NATIONS – They strike without warning, bringing terror to an apartment in Algeria, a Chinese shop in Indonesia, a squalid refugee encampment in Africa or a Balkan farming village under siege. They are shadowy men with causes so blinding and hatreds so deep that they have transformed modern warfare into orgies of primordial savagery – raping, brutalizing, humiliating, slashing and hacking women and girls to death.
More civilians than soldiers are being maimed and killed in the wars of nationalism and ethnicity that are the hallmark of the century’s end, wars fought in neighborhoods rather than battlefields.
More to the point, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the new style of warfare is often aimed specifically at women and is defined by a view of premeditated, organized sexual assault as a tactic in terrorizing and humiliating a civilian population. In some cases the violators express a motive that seems to have more in common with the tactics of ancient marauding hordes than with the 20th century – achieving forced pregnancy and thus poisoning the womb of the enemy.
International attention first focused on the use of rape as a tactic of warfare in Bosnia, where a U.N. commission and human rights groups found that ethnic Serb paramilitary groups had systematically tolerated or encouraged the raping of Bosnian Muslim women as part of the effort to drive Muslims from their homes and villages between 1991 and 1995.
Rape was also employed by Hutu troops against Tutsi women in the genocidal campaign Hutu leaders conducted in Rwanda in 1994. Last year, women who have identified with secular culture in Algeria accused desperate rebels fighting in the name of Islamic revolution of kidnapping them and making them sex slaves.
In Indonesia, reports are surfacing that suggest members of the security forces may have been among the men who raped ethnic Chinese women during rioting last month.
And in the Balkans, Serbs are again emptying towns of a rival ethnic group – this time Albanians in Kosovo – and human rights and women’s groups are monitoring the growing violence for the possibility that rape will again be one of the techniques.
None of this is the essentially random rape that traditionally follows conquest, intolerable though that is; it is different even from forcing conquered women to be prostitutes for the victors, as Japan did in Korea during World War II.
The difference is that in all four recent cases, sexual degradation and intimidation – often public – seem to have been used as a strategy of ethnic or religious conflict itself.
This use of rape as a premeditated act of warfare is challenging anew the efforts by nations of the world to organize effectively to prevent and punish crimes against humanity, a monumental task that moves into new territory tomorrow with the opening of a treaty conference in Rome to create the world’s first international criminal court.
Largely because of the systematic use of sexual assault in ethnic wars in the Balkans and Rwanda, the court is expected to rank rape as an internationally recognized war crime for the first time in history, alongside violence against noncombatants, mistreatment of prisoners, torture and other unusual punishments.
Widney Brown, an advocate with the women’s rights division of Human Rights Watch, echoed other experts when she said that rape “has probably been an issue in every major conflict, but what happened in Bosnia, particularly with the creation of the rape camps, really brought it to light.”
In the Balkans, where soldiers of every faction were accused of rape, the discovery of areas where Serbian soldiers confined Bosnian Muslim women to be raped shocked many. “In Yugoslavia rape was a part of ethnic cleansing, because the message that you got was if you stayed, the men would be murdered and the women would be raped,” Ms. Brown said.
“That was followed very quickly by what happened in Rwanda, where we have similar widespread allegations of rape and mutilation,” she added. “In fact, part of the preliminary campaign that created the atmosphere that allowed the genocide to happen was the demonization of Tutsi women as oversexualized creatures who were seductresses. It’s not surprising that during the conflict they were subjected to rape, and a lot of sexual mutilation. Mutilation is another way of saying, ‘We don’t perceive of this person as a human being.’ "
For about five years now, ad hoc tribunals have been hearing allegations of war crimes, first in the Balkans and later in Rwanda, and these tribunals have already decided to consider rape a war crime in those conflicts. Since they have been serving as small-scale models for the permanent international court that is just being formed, that court is expected to follow suit.
“These tribunals were literally forced to pay attention to a series of petitions and pressures from women’s organizations demanding that rape be recognized,” said Felice Gaer, an expert on human rights and international organizations for the American Jewish Committee. Ms. Gaer said that ultimately the support of Justice Richard Goldstone, the first war crimes prosecutor for the Balkans and Rwanda, succeeded in elevating sex crimes to the level of genocide and crimes against humanity.
This was the first step taken by nations trying to tackle collectively this new scourge of war. But women are drawing up a longer list of gender-related crimes in wartime, and promise a battle to have them recognized by the International Criminal Court.
Ken Franzblau, who tracks the sexual exploitation of women for Equality Now, a New York-based organization that aids women in poor nations and immigrant women here, said rape is so widespread now because it is so effective in ethnic wars.
“It has such devastating effects on communities, particularly in traditional societies or very religious communities where the virginity and the fidelity of women can be central to the makeup of that society,” he said. Rape is a psychological grenade thrown into the middle of daily life to provoke maximum terror. “That’s why you see a fair number of these rapes committed in front of family members of the girls or women involved,” he said.
Some analysts believe that the fast pace of international communications today may be a factor in the rapid recurrence of the use of rape as a tactic of war in such widely separate parts of the world. But if that is true, it is also evident that rapid international communication has played a role in stirring international outrage about the tactic.
Over the last decade, there have been significant changes among the vulnerable women themselves. Women who were the victims of sexual abuse in the name of ethnic purity, nationalism and sometimes religious zeal have begun to speak out, often aided by human rights organizations and women’s crisis centers. For many, this has been a revolutionary change.
“Lots of women just committed suicide in the past,” said Charlotte Bunch executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership at Rutgers. “That’s one very clear thing that’s beginning to emerge now. In this decade, the outrage that women have been able to raise about the issue means that people are reporting it. But the truth is that there is also a backlash about women speaking out. There may be some moments before we reach a point where there is enough outrage to get the phenomenon under control.”
The phenomenon takes human form in a number of recent accounts reported by journalists. Take the story of Nawal Fathi, who was captured by militants in Algeria in 1996, made into a sex slave and raped by a score of men before being rescued by government troops. A psychiatrist who treated her said that despite a year of medical treatment, Ms. Fathi committed suicide at the age of 24 last year.
In Jakarta, aid workers were quoted last week as saying that hundreds of ethnic Chinese women had been sexually assaulted during the looting of Chinese neighborhoods, apparently by organized gangs that may have had links to security forces. “Some of the attackers said, ‘You must be raped because you are Chinese and non-Muslim,’ " one woman recalled. Again, a number of women have killed themselves rather than live in shame.
Although militants in Algeria and roving gangs of rapists in Indonesia are Muslims, the phenomenon is probably not related to religion, though radical religious views may provide justification to an elemental misogyny.
The Taliban movement in Afghanistan, for example, has repressed women but its holy warriors have not abused them sexually, as their predecessors in the Mujahedeen armies were frequently accused of doing, Afghan women say.
Roman Catholics butchered other Roman Catholics in Rwanda and Burundi. Sex slaves are also a hallmark of the vaguely evangelical Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda. Burmese troops in Myanmar, a Buddhist country, are accused in a new report from the human-rights group Earthrights of using rape as a weapon against women from 20 or more ethnic minorities or student groups that oppose the military regime.
Because women displaced by ethnic warfare or other forms of mass violence are often not safe even in refugee camps – or arrive there pregnant through rape – United Nations relief agencies and some private groups have begun to offer gynecological services and the “morning after” pill, which prevents conception.
Although this practice has been sharply criticized by anti-abortion groups in the United States, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, and others have continued to provide help to abused women.
At Equality Now, Franzblau said the kind of sexual abuse that took place in Bosnia, where Serb rapes of Muslim women were numerous and intense personal hatred was directed at neighbors, not some distant stranger at an enemy gun emplacement, makes the impact much worse and stokes the fires for the next round of strife.
“That’s why it is going to be very difficult to reconcile these communities,” he said. “How can you move families back to homes where a mother or daughter or sister was raped by a next-door neighbor?”
Indonesian Report Widespread Rapes of Chinese in Riots
http://www.fica.org/cs/nyt-mayriot01-en
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/061098indonesia-chinese.html
June 10, 1998
Indonesians Report Widespread Rapes of Chinese in Riots
By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Human rights and women's aid groups have begun to document what they say appears to have been an organized campaign of assaults, gang rapes and killings of ethnic Chinese women during three days of rioting in Jakarta last month.
The aid workers say they have talked with dozens of victims or relatives of victims, and they estimated on Tuesday that more than 100 women and girls may have been attacked and raped in Jakarta alone as their neighborhoods were burning between May 13 and 15. There were reports of similar attacks during riots in other cities that preceded the fall of President Suharto on May 21.
One worker at a women's aid center, Sita Kayam, said she believed that hundreds of women were receiving physical or psychological help at hospitals here.
Other aid workers said most of the victims remained too traumatized to talk about their experiences and too terrified of reprisals to report their ordeals to officials or even to unofficial rape centers. The police said no reports of rape had been brought to the authorities.
Another worker at the women's aid center, Ita Nadia, said some women had committed suicide after their ordeals.
The reported attacks ranged from the degrading and humiliating to the horrific; from women who were made to strip and perform calisthenics in public to women who were repeatedly raped and then thrown into the flames of burning buildings.
The reports involve girls and women ranging in age from 10 to 55, the aid workers said. Some were gang-raped in front of a crowd in the Chinese commercial district of Glodok, said Rita Kolibonso, executive director of the women's group Mitra Perempuan.
"Some of the rapers said, 'You must be raped because you are Chinese and non-Muslim,"' said Ms. Ita, who works at a crisis center called Kalyana Mitra. Ethnic Chinese citizens, who control much of the country's commerce, have been targets of violence in Indonesia for years.
The consensus among human rights workers and rape counselors is that the attacks were mostly organized by unknown groups, in the same way that increasing evidence suggests that organized groups were involved in instigating attacks of arson and vandalism aimed largely at ethnic Chinese neighborhoods during the rioting. This evidence is based on reports that groups of men arrived simultaneously at various targets in the city 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 participant in the riots who said he had been recruited, briefed, paid and transported by unidentified men, who provided him and others with stones and gasoline bombs. The commission is the official government human-rights monitoring agency, but since its formation in 1996 has often been critical of the government.
Because of the organized nature of many of the reported assaults and because of some physical descriptions of the attackers, the 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.
Human rights groups have reported similar suspicions about reported instigators of the looting and arson, who traveled in groups through the city in vehicles.
Hasibuan's group reported last week that at least 1,188 people had died in the rioting in Jakarta and that 40 large shopping centers, 4,083 shops and 1,026 private homes had been attacked, burned or looted.
Lt. Col. Iman Haryatna, the Central Jakarta police chief, told reporters that victims were welcome to come forward but that the police had so far received no reports of assaults on women during the riots.
Because of a widespread mistrust of security forces both among the victims and human-rights workers, the reports of rapes are being gathered instead by two prominent women's crisis centers and three well-established human rights groups.
Two aid workers said they had received telephone threats warning them to stop their investigations and their aid to victims. One of these, a Catholic priest named Father Sandiyawan who works at the private Jakarta Social Institute, said someone had sent him a hand grenade in the mail as a warning.
The other said she received a telephone call on Saturday 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?"
Ms. Ita said that three weeks after the riots it is still very difficult to approach the victims of rapes and harassment "because their trauma is very deep."
"Even for myself, I will tell you that it is really emotionally difficult because I have to confront the experiences of the victims," she said. "It is really very, very bad."
Slowly and painfully, she and other counselors have compiled accounts like the following:
A student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a swamp near the airport and raped by four men in a car. There was a green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were police officers. "If you are police, you have to save me," she told them, according to Ms. Ita. One of them answered: "No, I have to give you a lesson. You are a woman and you are beautiful and you are part of the Chinese."
In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and forced out all the non-Chinese women. "Then they chose the beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the bus," Sandiyawan said. "The victims of that incident are really depressive. They are in the hospital with their families. They are trying to hide themselves from the public."
A 10-year-old girl returning from school discovered that the shop-house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As she went in search of her parents, she was seized by two men and raped in front of her neighbors.
One woman, a bank officer, told a local reporter that she was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of the riot and thrown to the ground by a group of men. "She told me she was so hysterical and she was so panicked that she does not remember what happened," the reporter said. "But she showed me a lot of bruises on her body, especially on her legs."
In an incident of public humiliation, a group of about 15 men entered a bank where 10 ethnic Chinese employees were taking refuge from the riot. The men locked the door, made the women take off their clothes and ordered them to dance. In a similar incident during a riot in the city of Medan on May 4, 20 female students at a teachers' training college were stopped by police officers when they tried to flee the violence on their campus. The officers forced them to take off their clothes and perform calisthenics. In both cases, the women reported that they were fondled but not raped. In another incident of harassment during the riot in Jakarta, a number of ethnic Chinese women were reportedly stripped and made to swim in a pond.
Ms. Ita told of an ethnic Chinese woman who hid in her house with her two younger sisters as the rioters approached. About 10 men came into the house and found the sisters on the third floor. They made the two younger women take off their clothes and told the older sister to stand in a corner, "because you are too old for us." Meanwhile, arsonists entered the lower floors and set fire to the building. "After they had raped her two sisters, the two men said to her, 'We are finished and we are satisfied and because you are too old and ugly we weren't interested in you.' So they took her two sisters and pushed them to the ground floor where there was already fire, and they were killed.
"When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died," Ms. Ita said. "So now this woman is in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes she cries when she tells the story and sometimes she is normal again. That is one of the stories we have confirmed."
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/world/061098indonesia-chinese.html
June 10, 1998
Indonesians Report Widespread Rapes of Chinese in Riots
By SETH MYDANS
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Human rights and women's aid groups have begun to document what they say appears to have been an organized campaign of assaults, gang rapes and killings of ethnic Chinese women during three days of rioting in Jakarta last month.
The aid workers say they have talked with dozens of victims or relatives of victims, and they estimated on Tuesday that more than 100 women and girls may have been attacked and raped in Jakarta alone as their neighborhoods were burning between May 13 and 15. There were reports of similar attacks during riots in other cities that preceded the fall of President Suharto on May 21.
One worker at a women's aid center, Sita Kayam, said she believed that hundreds of women were receiving physical or psychological help at hospitals here.
Other aid workers said most of the victims remained too traumatized to talk about their experiences and too terrified of reprisals to report their ordeals to officials or even to unofficial rape centers. The police said no reports of rape had been brought to the authorities.
Another worker at the women's aid center, Ita Nadia, said some women had committed suicide after their ordeals.
The reported attacks ranged from the degrading and humiliating to the horrific; from women who were made to strip and perform calisthenics in public to women who were repeatedly raped and then thrown into the flames of burning buildings.
The reports involve girls and women ranging in age from 10 to 55, the aid workers said. Some were gang-raped in front of a crowd in the Chinese commercial district of Glodok, said Rita Kolibonso, executive director of the women's group Mitra Perempuan.
"Some of the rapers said, 'You must be raped because you are Chinese and non-Muslim,"' said Ms. Ita, who works at a crisis center called Kalyana Mitra. Ethnic Chinese citizens, who control much of the country's commerce, have been targets of violence in Indonesia for years.
The consensus among human rights workers and rape counselors is that the attacks were mostly organized by unknown groups, in the same way that increasing evidence suggests that organized groups were involved in instigating attacks of arson and vandalism aimed largely at ethnic Chinese neighborhoods during the rioting. This evidence is based on reports that groups of men arrived simultaneously at various targets in the city 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 participant in the riots who said he had been recruited, briefed, paid and transported by unidentified men, who provided him and others with stones and gasoline bombs. The commission is the official government human-rights monitoring agency, but since its formation in 1996 has often been critical of the government.
Because of the organized nature of many of the reported assaults and because of some physical descriptions of the attackers, the 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.
Human rights groups have reported similar suspicions about reported instigators of the looting and arson, who traveled in groups through the city in vehicles.
Hasibuan's group reported last week that at least 1,188 people had died in the rioting in Jakarta and that 40 large shopping centers, 4,083 shops and 1,026 private homes had been attacked, burned or looted.
Lt. Col. Iman Haryatna, the Central Jakarta police chief, told reporters that victims were welcome to come forward but that the police had so far received no reports of assaults on women during the riots.
Because of a widespread mistrust of security forces both among the victims and human-rights workers, the reports of rapes are being gathered instead by two prominent women's crisis centers and three well-established human rights groups.
Two aid workers said they had received telephone threats warning them to stop their investigations and their aid to victims. One of these, a Catholic priest named Father Sandiyawan who works at the private Jakarta Social Institute, said someone had sent him a hand grenade in the mail as a warning.
The other said she received a telephone call on Saturday 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?"
Ms. Ita said that three weeks after the riots it is still very difficult to approach the victims of rapes and harassment "because their trauma is very deep."
"Even for myself, I will tell you that it is really emotionally difficult because I have to confront the experiences of the victims," she said. "It is really very, very bad."
Slowly and painfully, she and other counselors have compiled accounts like the following:
A student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a swamp near the airport and raped by four men in a car. There was a green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were police officers. "If you are police, you have to save me," she told them, according to Ms. Ita. One of them answered: "No, I have to give you a lesson. You are a woman and you are beautiful and you are part of the Chinese."
In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and forced out all the non-Chinese women. "Then they chose the beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the bus," Sandiyawan said. "The victims of that incident are really depressive. They are in the hospital with their families. They are trying to hide themselves from the public."
A 10-year-old girl returning from school discovered that the shop-house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As she went in search of her parents, she was seized by two men and raped in front of her neighbors.
One woman, a bank officer, told a local reporter that she was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of the riot and thrown to the ground by a group of men. "She told me she was so hysterical and she was so panicked that she does not remember what happened," the reporter said. "But she showed me a lot of bruises on her body, especially on her legs."
In an incident of public humiliation, a group of about 15 men entered a bank where 10 ethnic Chinese employees were taking refuge from the riot. The men locked the door, made the women take off their clothes and ordered them to dance. In a similar incident during a riot in the city of Medan on May 4, 20 female students at a teachers' training college were stopped by police officers when they tried to flee the violence on their campus. The officers forced them to take off their clothes and perform calisthenics. In both cases, the women reported that they were fondled but not raped. In another incident of harassment during the riot in Jakarta, a number of ethnic Chinese women were reportedly stripped and made to swim in a pond.
Ms. Ita told of an ethnic Chinese woman who hid in her house with her two younger sisters as the rioters approached. About 10 men came into the house and found the sisters on the third floor. They made the two younger women take off their clothes and told the older sister to stand in a corner, "because you are too old for us." Meanwhile, arsonists entered the lower floors and set fire to the building. "After they had raped her two sisters, the two men said to her, 'We are finished and we are satisfied and because you are too old and ugly we weren't interested in you.' So they took her two sisters and pushed them to the ground floor where there was already fire, and they were killed.
"When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died," Ms. Ita said. "So now this woman is in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes she cries when she tells the story and sometimes she is normal again. That is one of the stories we have confirmed."
Orang-orang Berseragam Memperkosa gadis-gadis China Indonesia
http://www.fica.org/cs/fr-mayriot-id
Orang2 berseragam memperkosa gadis2 China
Organisasi2 Wanita mendokumentasikan penganiayaan seksual
selama kerusuhan di Indonesia / ABRI menjanjikan penyelidikan .
Oleh Juergen Dauth (Singapura)
Para pengamat hak azasi manusia dan organisasi2 wanita di Indonesia
sudah mulai mendokumentasi kasus2 pemerkosaan selama kerusuhan
yang mengakibatkan kejatuhan Suharto. "Kerusuhan itu direncanakan,
dikendalikan, dan disengaja", demikian kata pekerja sosial Sita Kayam
dengan marah. Ia adalah seorang rekan kerja sebuah oraganisasi
wanita di Jakarta. Ratusan wanita telah diperkosa selama kerusuhan
sekejap yang melanda ibukota, juga di kota2 provinsi.
Menurut dokumentasi, korban2 yang mayoritas adalah etnis China
itu mengatakan bahwa pemerkosa2 itu kebanyakan mengenakan
seragam. "Para pemerkosa itu mengatakan, 'Sekarang giliran kamu,
karena kamu China dan bukan Muslim' ", demikian kata seorang
korban menurut psikolog Yayasan Kalyana Mitra.
Segala bentuk kekerasan seksual yang selama ini hanya kita bisa
bayangkan, kini benar2 terjadi, kata Sita Kayam. "Dan kami jadi
yakin kalau ini semua bukan kebetulan. Semua kegiatan mempermalukan
perempuan ini direncanakan dan diorganisasi dengan sekasama."
Ratusan korban telah mengadu ke organisasi2 wanita.
"Rumah saya terbakar, " cerita Helen Chang dengan ragu2. "Kami
menyelamatkan diri ke halaman. Saat itu datang beberapa laki2. Mereka
mengenakan kaos dan celana seragam. Mereka membanting saya ke tanah
lalu mereka satu per satu memperkosa saya." Kemudian, kata ibu berusia
44 tahun ini, tanpa daya ia harus melihat bagaimana ketiga anak
perempuannya diperkosa.
Para perkerja sosial di klinik2 psikologi dan organisasi2 wanita
bersama2 mendapatkan gambaran yang cukup serupa. Kebanyakan
korban, 98% adalah etnis China, diperkosa antara 13 - 15 Mei
juga 18 - 19 Mei. Para pelaku, menurut laporan, berpotongan
rambut ala militer dan mengenakan bagian2 dari pakaian seragam militer.
Mereka selalu muncul dalam bentuk kelompok2. Jumlah perkosaan di
kota2 di luar Jakarta baru pada saat itu meningkat.
Para psikolog di pusat2 pertolongan untuk korban perkosaan
berusaha susah payah agar para korban yang trauma mau
berbicara. "Kebanyakan wanita2 dan gadis2 mengalami perlakuan
yang terlalu kasar dan mereka takut para pelaku membalas dendam."
kata Rita Kolibonso dari organisasi wanita Mitra Perempuan.
Di antara korban terdapat yang berusia 13 tahun dan 72 tahun.
Komandan Polisi Jakarta Pusat, Lettu Iman Haryatnam telah meminta
pada para korban kekerasan seksual ini untuk melapor. Panglima
ABRI, Jendral Wiranto menjanjikan suatu penyelidikan dengan cara
mengajukan rencana pembuatan pos2. Para pemerkosa tampaknya
tahu bahwa suatu penyelidikan tengah dimulai. Romo Sandyawan
dari badan sosial katholik di Jakarta mendapat kiriman pos sebuah
granat tangan dan tulisan agar ia menghentikan kegiatan dokumentasi.
Organisasi2 hak azasi manusia mendapat peringatan melalui telepon:
"Kami sudah mengirimi Sandyawan sebuah granat. Kamu mau lebih
banyak?"
Sandyawan sudah mempublikasikan data di antaranya, wanita2 yang
diperkosa lalu dilemparkan ke dalam bangunan yang tengah dilalap
api. Albert Hasibuan, anggota Komnas HAM bersumpah akan mengusut
pelanggaran berat HAM ini sampai tuntas. "Kami tidak bisa membiarkan
kejahatan ini tidak mendapat hukuman, bahwa kita manusia karena motif
politik jadi bertingkah laku lebih rendah dari binatang."
Copyright A9 Frankfurter Rundschau 1998
Dokumen disiapkan pada 11.06.1998 jam .45
Tanggal penyiaran 12.06.1998
Orang2 berseragam memperkosa gadis2 China
Organisasi2 Wanita mendokumentasikan penganiayaan seksual
selama kerusuhan di Indonesia / ABRI menjanjikan penyelidikan .
Oleh Juergen Dauth (Singapura)
Para pengamat hak azasi manusia dan organisasi2 wanita di Indonesia
sudah mulai mendokumentasi kasus2 pemerkosaan selama kerusuhan
yang mengakibatkan kejatuhan Suharto. "Kerusuhan itu direncanakan,
dikendalikan, dan disengaja", demikian kata pekerja sosial Sita Kayam
dengan marah. Ia adalah seorang rekan kerja sebuah oraganisasi
wanita di Jakarta. Ratusan wanita telah diperkosa selama kerusuhan
sekejap yang melanda ibukota, juga di kota2 provinsi.
Menurut dokumentasi, korban2 yang mayoritas adalah etnis China
itu mengatakan bahwa pemerkosa2 itu kebanyakan mengenakan
seragam. "Para pemerkosa itu mengatakan, 'Sekarang giliran kamu,
karena kamu China dan bukan Muslim' ", demikian kata seorang
korban menurut psikolog Yayasan Kalyana Mitra.
Segala bentuk kekerasan seksual yang selama ini hanya kita bisa
bayangkan, kini benar2 terjadi, kata Sita Kayam. "Dan kami jadi
yakin kalau ini semua bukan kebetulan. Semua kegiatan mempermalukan
perempuan ini direncanakan dan diorganisasi dengan sekasama."
Ratusan korban telah mengadu ke organisasi2 wanita.
"Rumah saya terbakar, " cerita Helen Chang dengan ragu2. "Kami
menyelamatkan diri ke halaman. Saat itu datang beberapa laki2. Mereka
mengenakan kaos dan celana seragam. Mereka membanting saya ke tanah
lalu mereka satu per satu memperkosa saya." Kemudian, kata ibu berusia
44 tahun ini, tanpa daya ia harus melihat bagaimana ketiga anak
perempuannya diperkosa.
Para perkerja sosial di klinik2 psikologi dan organisasi2 wanita
bersama2 mendapatkan gambaran yang cukup serupa. Kebanyakan
korban, 98% adalah etnis China, diperkosa antara 13 - 15 Mei
juga 18 - 19 Mei. Para pelaku, menurut laporan, berpotongan
rambut ala militer dan mengenakan bagian2 dari pakaian seragam militer.
Mereka selalu muncul dalam bentuk kelompok2. Jumlah perkosaan di
kota2 di luar Jakarta baru pada saat itu meningkat.
Para psikolog di pusat2 pertolongan untuk korban perkosaan
berusaha susah payah agar para korban yang trauma mau
berbicara. "Kebanyakan wanita2 dan gadis2 mengalami perlakuan
yang terlalu kasar dan mereka takut para pelaku membalas dendam."
kata Rita Kolibonso dari organisasi wanita Mitra Perempuan.
Di antara korban terdapat yang berusia 13 tahun dan 72 tahun.
Komandan Polisi Jakarta Pusat, Lettu Iman Haryatnam telah meminta
pada para korban kekerasan seksual ini untuk melapor. Panglima
ABRI, Jendral Wiranto menjanjikan suatu penyelidikan dengan cara
mengajukan rencana pembuatan pos2. Para pemerkosa tampaknya
tahu bahwa suatu penyelidikan tengah dimulai. Romo Sandyawan
dari badan sosial katholik di Jakarta mendapat kiriman pos sebuah
granat tangan dan tulisan agar ia menghentikan kegiatan dokumentasi.
Organisasi2 hak azasi manusia mendapat peringatan melalui telepon:
"Kami sudah mengirimi Sandyawan sebuah granat. Kamu mau lebih
banyak?"
Sandyawan sudah mempublikasikan data di antaranya, wanita2 yang
diperkosa lalu dilemparkan ke dalam bangunan yang tengah dilalap
api. Albert Hasibuan, anggota Komnas HAM bersumpah akan mengusut
pelanggaran berat HAM ini sampai tuntas. "Kami tidak bisa membiarkan
kejahatan ini tidak mendapat hukuman, bahwa kita manusia karena motif
politik jadi bertingkah laku lebih rendah dari binatang."
Copyright A9 Frankfurter Rundschau 1998
Dokumen disiapkan pada 11.06.1998 jam .45
Tanggal penyiaran 12.06.1998
Indonesian Chinese Ready to make quick exit
http://www.fica.org/cs/chinese_ready_to_make_quick_exit
JUN 14 1998
Chinese ready to make quick exit
JAKARTA – Anecdotal evidence shows that thousands of Chinese-Indonesian families in the capital are prepared to leave at the first sign of renewed unrest.
With valid passports in hand, the families said last month’s riots had taught them a painful lesson about their vulnerable position in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post reported yesterday.
“My relatives and most of my students keep their passports with them so they can flee as soon as a new riot takes place,” said Mr Edison Yulius, a lecturer of architecture at Tarumanegara University here.
To get quick cash, some were reportedly offering houses, vehicles and furniture at low prices, the paper reported. Many preferred to travel to Singapore, Malaysia and Hongkong as temporary destinations as they did not need visas to enter these countries.
Housewife Liliek of Jalambar, West Jakarta, said she would flee with her two teenage daughters and leave her belongings behind. She told the paper that she knew of hundreds of families, neighbours and friends who were prepared to leave this way.
She said a couple were undergoing treatment at Bhakti Husada Hospital for deep psychological trauma as they could not accept the deaths of their children – three teenage girls – at the family’s shop at Glodok business centre in West Jakarta on May 13.
“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.
Ms Liliek’s eldest daughter said some of her friends had been stripped and molested by mobs during the riots.
Earlier this month, 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 Hongkong, the group’s spokesman Nazar Haroen said.
Deep concern prevails among the Chinese-Indonesians over their future as they are the usual target of mob violence during times of hardship in Indonesia.
However, many of them were quick to point out that Indonesia is the only land they have known, said the daily.
“The decision to prepare to leave Indonesia, the country where we were born and grew up, is not an easy choice,” said Mr Qin Yang Min Tze of South Jakarta who plans to leave with his wife and two daughters to China or the US.
JUN 14 1998
Chinese ready to make quick exit
JAKARTA – Anecdotal evidence shows that thousands of Chinese-Indonesian families in the capital are prepared to leave at the first sign of renewed unrest.
With valid passports in hand, the families said last month’s riots had taught them a painful lesson about their vulnerable position in Indonesia, The Jakarta Post reported yesterday.
“My relatives and most of my students keep their passports with them so they can flee as soon as a new riot takes place,” said Mr Edison Yulius, a lecturer of architecture at Tarumanegara University here.
To get quick cash, some were reportedly offering houses, vehicles and furniture at low prices, the paper reported. Many preferred to travel to Singapore, Malaysia and Hongkong as temporary destinations as they did not need visas to enter these countries.
Housewife Liliek of Jalambar, West Jakarta, said she would flee with her two teenage daughters and leave her belongings behind. She told the paper that she knew of hundreds of families, neighbours and friends who were prepared to leave this way.
She said a couple were undergoing treatment at Bhakti Husada Hospital for deep psychological trauma as they could not accept the deaths of their children – three teenage girls – at the family’s shop at Glodok business centre in West Jakarta on May 13.
“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.
Ms Liliek’s eldest daughter said some of her friends had been stripped and molested by mobs during the riots.
Earlier this month, 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 Hongkong, the group’s spokesman Nazar Haroen said.
Deep concern prevails among the Chinese-Indonesians over their future as they are the usual target of mob violence during times of hardship in Indonesia.
However, many of them were quick to point out that Indonesia is the only land they have known, said the daily.
“The decision to prepare to leave Indonesia, the country where we were born and grew up, is not an easy choice,” said Mr Qin Yang Min Tze of South Jakarta who plans to leave with his wife and two daughters to China or the US.
Indonesia's Oppressed minorities
http://www.fica.org/cs/jp-mayriot-id
JAKARTA POST INDONESIA
RI(Indonesia)’s oppressed minorities
DONNA K. WOODWARD
The Chinese in Indonesia have been well served by the policies of
Indonesia’s post-Independence governments, which have maintained a
discriminatory, emasculating regulatory scheme that deprives
Chinese-Indonesians of basic civil rights.
Now the Chinese live in fear of physical attack from run-amok masses of
pribumi (indigenous Indonesian) looters. Chinese-Indonesians are a
numerically very small ethnic minority in Indonesia and doubly
``minoritized by the fact that they are generally also adherents of one of the minority religions in a country which highly values religious unity. But Chinese-Indonesians are different from minority groups in other countries in a very significant way. Their minority status and the consequent denial of civil rights and privileges has not led to economic oppression as it has for minority populations in virtually every other nation. Usually, political power and economic strength go hand in hand. For minorities in many places, political power has not been so much an end in itself as the means to secure the economic opportunities they have been denied. For Chinese-Indonesians, however, economic opportunities have not been denied. In fact, while privately criticizing the system which has denied them civil rights unlike other oppressed minority groups, Chinese-Indonesians have largely demurred from taking concerted action in pursuit of political rights. Indonesia is atypical in that a minority group which has been denied civil rights has been able to flourish economically, to the point of holding the major share of the country’s wealth. For this reason, the terms minority and oppression as they are customarily used, may not be the most helpful language to use in speaking Indonesia’s situation. Chinese-Indonesians are not typical of oppressed minorities. In many ways the pribumi are more oppressed though by economic deprivation rather than by the absence of civil rights. Many pribumi would, I venture to say, gladly trade their right to government employment, their possession of an uncoded identity card, their access to state universities for the freedom of lifestyle that economic privilege can bring. The Chinese-Indonesian minority might not be as interested in a corresponding trade-off of economic opportunities for civil rights. The reservoirs of resentment within both ethnic groups are deepening. As long as individuals are preoccupied with blaming the other group (The
Indonesians deny us our full rights/The Chinese control all the
wealth’‘) the profounder causes of oppression and violence remain and are
unaddressed.
The enemy is not each other. Chinese-Indonesians and the pribumi need each
other. The country needs the capital that the Chinese have built up, their
business expertise and the distribution networks. Chinese-owned businesses
need pribumi manpower and the pribumi consumer market. If the pribumi are
driven to mass violence by unjustified price inflations and substandard
wages, or if the Chinese are driven away by large-scale violence, everyone
suffers.
Violence. The person whose shop has been looted and burned, the rape victim,
they are obvious, tragic victims of dramatic violence. The persons who labor
in factories, mills and shrimp farms for wages so low they cannot support a
family in dignity, in a work environment where there is no regard for
workers’ health and safety, these are also victims of violence. So are those
whose life savings were wiped out in bank liquidations resulting from
white-collar crimes of corruption.
Who are the oppressed? Who are the victims? The enemy is not each other.
Ordinary Chinese and pribumi are both victims of the collusive partnership
between high-level pribumi officials and Chinese owners of Indonesia’s
megabusinesses. These partnerships and the corruption they spawned have
victimized the country without regard for ethnic identity. This collusive
partnership system is the oppressor. Ordinary middle-class and poor pribumi
and Chinese alike are its victims. Can the two communities now cooperate to
recover from violence and oppression together?
Copyright 1998 JAKARTA POST all rights reserved as distributed by
WorldSources, Inc.
JAKARTA POST INDONESIA
RI(Indonesia)’s oppressed minorities
DONNA K. WOODWARD
The Chinese in Indonesia have been well served by the policies of
Indonesia’s post-Independence governments, which have maintained a
discriminatory, emasculating regulatory scheme that deprives
Chinese-Indonesians of basic civil rights.
Now the Chinese live in fear of physical attack from run-amok masses of
pribumi (indigenous Indonesian) looters. Chinese-Indonesians are a
numerically very small ethnic minority in Indonesia and doubly
``minoritized by the fact that they are generally also adherents of one of the minority religions in a country which highly values religious unity. But Chinese-Indonesians are different from minority groups in other countries in a very significant way. Their minority status and the consequent denial of civil rights and privileges has not led to economic oppression as it has for minority populations in virtually every other nation. Usually, political power and economic strength go hand in hand. For minorities in many places, political power has not been so much an end in itself as the means to secure the economic opportunities they have been denied. For Chinese-Indonesians, however, economic opportunities have not been denied. In fact, while privately criticizing the system which has denied them civil rights unlike other oppressed minority groups, Chinese-Indonesians have largely demurred from taking concerted action in pursuit of political rights. Indonesia is atypical in that a minority group which has been denied civil rights has been able to flourish economically, to the point of holding the major share of the country’s wealth. For this reason, the terms minority and oppression as they are customarily used, may not be the most helpful language to use in speaking Indonesia’s situation. Chinese-Indonesians are not typical of oppressed minorities. In many ways the pribumi are more oppressed though by economic deprivation rather than by the absence of civil rights. Many pribumi would, I venture to say, gladly trade their right to government employment, their possession of an uncoded identity card, their access to state universities for the freedom of lifestyle that economic privilege can bring. The Chinese-Indonesian minority might not be as interested in a corresponding trade-off of economic opportunities for civil rights. The reservoirs of resentment within both ethnic groups are deepening. As long as individuals are preoccupied with blaming the other group (The
Indonesians deny us our full rights/The Chinese control all the
wealth’‘) the profounder causes of oppression and violence remain and are
unaddressed.
The enemy is not each other. Chinese-Indonesians and the pribumi need each
other. The country needs the capital that the Chinese have built up, their
business expertise and the distribution networks. Chinese-owned businesses
need pribumi manpower and the pribumi consumer market. If the pribumi are
driven to mass violence by unjustified price inflations and substandard
wages, or if the Chinese are driven away by large-scale violence, everyone
suffers.
Violence. The person whose shop has been looted and burned, the rape victim,
they are obvious, tragic victims of dramatic violence. The persons who labor
in factories, mills and shrimp farms for wages so low they cannot support a
family in dignity, in a work environment where there is no regard for
workers’ health and safety, these are also victims of violence. So are those
whose life savings were wiped out in bank liquidations resulting from
white-collar crimes of corruption.
Who are the oppressed? Who are the victims? The enemy is not each other.
Ordinary Chinese and pribumi are both victims of the collusive partnership
between high-level pribumi officials and Chinese owners of Indonesia’s
megabusinesses. These partnerships and the corruption they spawned have
victimized the country without regard for ethnic identity. This collusive
partnership system is the oppressor. Ordinary middle-class and poor pribumi
and Chinese alike are its victims. Can the two communities now cooperate to
recover from violence and oppression together?
Copyright 1998 JAKARTA POST all rights reserved as distributed by
WorldSources, Inc.
Asia Week: How Indonesian Am I?
http://www.fica.org/cs/aw-kwok
HOW INDONESIAN AM I?
YENNI KWOK, 25, is an Asiaweek staffer based in Hong Kong.
HOW INDONESIAN AM I?
Let me put it this way. The other night, when a rainstorm woke me up in the middle of the night, my first thoughts were "Wonderful! Maybe it will help put out the fires in town." In what town? The fires were in Jakarta; I've been living in Hong Kong since last year. So, yes, I'm Indonesian, all right. But I'm also ethnically Chinese. Some people think I can't be both. Not completely, anyway.
I feel as Indonesian as any indigenous pribumi. I was born in Jakarta. So were my three sisters and one brother. And my mom and dad too. We speak Indonesian at home. My roots and my future are there. I'm passionate about the country - from the culture to the beauty of the countryside to the mysteries of its political life. For me, China is an exotic faraway place, somewhere I would love to visit. But that's all. My parents went there once and I got the impression that for them it was a bit like, say, an Australian going to Europe to see where his ancestors had come from.
Since the rioting started, I have been in touch with my family regularly. They are frightened, of course, but they are fine. They say there has been no trouble in the mainly pribumi area where they live. But, elsewhere in town, an aunt's house was attacked with rocks and a store house owned by a friend was burned to the ground. "It's finished, totally finished," my sister said on the phone. She was too distressed for me to establish whether she was talking about our friend's business or the country.
But now a confession. For all my "Indonesian-ness," I was brought up almost in a different world from the pribumi. Chinese schools are banned in Indonesia (as are the public display of Chinese characters and the celebrating of the lunar New Year, among other things), so most Chinese go to private Christian schools. At the one I attended, the only other children were Chinese. There were pribumi living on my street, but I can't honestly say I knew much about them. A brief "hello" here; a "how are you?" there. Anyway, like most Chinese parents, my mom and dad crammed my after-school hours with so many classes (English, music and others) that I didn't have a lot of time for socializing with anybody.
It wasn't until I returned from studying in the U.S. and took a job in journalism that I got to know any pribumi. Now I count a number of them among my closest friends. But I am an exception. For most Chinese, the only pribumi they ever get to know is their household maid, their pembantu. Once they reach adulthood, there is almost no further social contact. Even in professional life, the two groups rarely mingle.
Is it any wonder, then, there is suspicion and prejudice - on both sides? I have never had any racist remarks directed at me personally, but I know the Chinese are accused of being concerned only with their own welfare and with making money. As for Chinese attitudes about the pribumi, I remember, when I was a youngster, asking my father why they were referred to as fangui (literally "rice devils," but meaning inferior). "We eat rice too," I said. "So we're also fangui, right?" My father just smiled. It was too difficult - and probably too embarrassing - to explain.
And so it goes on. If I am seen on the street with a Chinese male, no one pays any attention. If I am with a Westerner, people may look but no more. But if I'm in the company of a pribumi, we draw stares - hostile looks that suggest there is something distasteful about our relationship. Those glares hurt, of course, but they are also saddening. Do they mean there is no place for a Chinese in Indonesia - even one who wakes up worrying about her town burning down?
HOW INDONESIAN AM I?
YENNI KWOK, 25, is an Asiaweek staffer based in Hong Kong.
HOW INDONESIAN AM I?
Let me put it this way. The other night, when a rainstorm woke me up in the middle of the night, my first thoughts were "Wonderful! Maybe it will help put out the fires in town." In what town? The fires were in Jakarta; I've been living in Hong Kong since last year. So, yes, I'm Indonesian, all right. But I'm also ethnically Chinese. Some people think I can't be both. Not completely, anyway.
I feel as Indonesian as any indigenous pribumi. I was born in Jakarta. So were my three sisters and one brother. And my mom and dad too. We speak Indonesian at home. My roots and my future are there. I'm passionate about the country - from the culture to the beauty of the countryside to the mysteries of its political life. For me, China is an exotic faraway place, somewhere I would love to visit. But that's all. My parents went there once and I got the impression that for them it was a bit like, say, an Australian going to Europe to see where his ancestors had come from.
Since the rioting started, I have been in touch with my family regularly. They are frightened, of course, but they are fine. They say there has been no trouble in the mainly pribumi area where they live. But, elsewhere in town, an aunt's house was attacked with rocks and a store house owned by a friend was burned to the ground. "It's finished, totally finished," my sister said on the phone. She was too distressed for me to establish whether she was talking about our friend's business or the country.
But now a confession. For all my "Indonesian-ness," I was brought up almost in a different world from the pribumi. Chinese schools are banned in Indonesia (as are the public display of Chinese characters and the celebrating of the lunar New Year, among other things), so most Chinese go to private Christian schools. At the one I attended, the only other children were Chinese. There were pribumi living on my street, but I can't honestly say I knew much about them. A brief "hello" here; a "how are you?" there. Anyway, like most Chinese parents, my mom and dad crammed my after-school hours with so many classes (English, music and others) that I didn't have a lot of time for socializing with anybody.
It wasn't until I returned from studying in the U.S. and took a job in journalism that I got to know any pribumi. Now I count a number of them among my closest friends. But I am an exception. For most Chinese, the only pribumi they ever get to know is their household maid, their pembantu. Once they reach adulthood, there is almost no further social contact. Even in professional life, the two groups rarely mingle.
Is it any wonder, then, there is suspicion and prejudice - on both sides? I have never had any racist remarks directed at me personally, but I know the Chinese are accused of being concerned only with their own welfare and with making money. As for Chinese attitudes about the pribumi, I remember, when I was a youngster, asking my father why they were referred to as fangui (literally "rice devils," but meaning inferior). "We eat rice too," I said. "So we're also fangui, right?" My father just smiled. It was too difficult - and probably too embarrassing - to explain.
And so it goes on. If I am seen on the street with a Chinese male, no one pays any attention. If I am with a Westerner, people may look but no more. But if I'm in the company of a pribumi, we draw stares - hostile looks that suggest there is something distasteful about our relationship. Those glares hurt, of course, but they are also saddening. Do they mean there is no place for a Chinese in Indonesia - even one who wakes up worrying about her town burning down?
Account of Gang Rape of Chinese Women Emerge from Jakarta Riots
http://www.fica.org/cs/ar-mayriot-en
Accounts of Gang Rape of Chinese Women Emerge from Jakarta Riots
Andreas Harsono
American Reporter Correspondent
Jakarta, Indonesia
(06/13/98)
JAKARTA – Gruesome tales of brutal sexual and racist violence in
Indonesia have slowly begun to emerge here as social workers and human
rights advocates learn more of an organized campaign of assaults, gang
rapes and killings of ethnic Chinese women during three days of rioting in
Jakarta last month.
Indonesian media only reported the violence – initially only rumored on the
Internet and among the small Chinese community in Jakarta – after scores
of social workers, feminists and Chinese figures had announced the setting
up of a crisis center to help the victims.
“Tell me, what kind of human beings are evil enough to rape a 12-year-old
girl in front of her helpless parents?” asked Ita F. Nadia, the chairwoman of
Kalyanamitra, a women’s group which opened a telephone hotline for the
victims.
“They’re incredibly cruel and brutal,” said Nadia.
The establishment of the center, named the Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa or the
Solidarity of the Nation State, was announced in a meeting on June 5 in
Jakarta, during which Catholic priest Sandyawan Sumardi estimated that
dozens of Chinese women had died or committed suicide because of the
violence on May 14-16.
Sandyawan, who is known because of his work among Jakarta’s underclass
and has organized an investigation into the attack, said that the
anti-Chinese attack had shown a pattern of similarities and usually involved
“well-built men with [a] crew-cut hairstyle.”
The unidentified men generally began the violence by coming to a street in
a truck or a bus and attacking only one house on the street. They
encouraged other people in the area to join them in attacking the other
Chinese-owned houses in the vicinity and then looting their contents.
Although Sandyawan did not pinpoint any group, his statement is widely
intrepretated here to refer to military men. Rumors circulated widely here
that some high-ranking army officers were involved in the riots which
targeted the Chinese – the equivalent of here of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
“They always threatened their victims not to talk to the media. They said
they could easily recognize those who speak up as they only attack one
house on every street,” said Sandyawan, adding that the provocateurs also
gang-raped Chinese women before leaving the street.
“We don’t know how many have been molested or forced to strip naked.
They obviously want to terrorize the Chinese and especially the women,”
she said.
Both Kolibonso and Nadia, who give legal and psychological counseling to
the victims, refused to provide their names to the media, saying that the
victims are extremely traumatized and that publication of their names might
endanger their lives.
The sudden resignation of Indonesian strongman Suharto on May 21
apparently overshadowed coverage of the brutal violence, as did the
student movement which helped forced Suharto to step down.
But rumors about the gang rapes started to emerge on the Net after the
riots, which saw more than 100 supermalls and thousands of shops and
houses burned to the ground. Jakarta hospitals recorded more than 1,100
deaths during the riots, mostly of looters or residents trapped in burning
buildings and homes. The riots are widely thought to be the worst in
Jakarta’s modern history.
Slowly and painfully, Kolibonso, Nadia and Sandyawan have compiled
accounts like the following from interviews with victims and witnesses:
A female Chinese student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a
swamp near the airport and raped by four men in a car. There was a
green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were
officers. “If you are police, you have to save me,” she told them.
One of them answered, “No, I have to give you a lesson. You are a
woman and you are beautiful and you are part of the Chinese.”
One young woman had a lucky escape after her taxi was stopped by
a mob in the middle of the night on May 14. She was forced out of
her taxi and forcibly stripped in front of the crowd. “Then a man
pushed through the crowd, pulled me out and gave me a Muslim
clothes to wear,” the woman recalled.
In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and
forced out all the non-Chinese women. “Then they chose the
beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the
bus,” Sandyawan said. “The victims of that incident are really
depressive. They are in the hospital with their families. They are
trying to hide themselves from the public.”
A 10-year-old girl returning from school discovered that the shop
and house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As
she went in search of her parents, she was seized by two men and
raped in front of her neighbors.
A man told the Indonesian Human Rights Commission about how
his wife’s attackers had mutilated her genitals with a razor blade after
first raping her. He also said about a friend’s wife drank pesticide
and committed suicide a few days after being raped.
One woman, a bank officer, told the Kompas newspaper that she
was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of rioters and
thrown to the ground by a group of men. The mob beat her
boyfriend, who could only asked for mercy. The Chinese girl was so
hysterical and so panicked that she does not remember what
happened. When she regained her consciousness, she said, she
saw many bruises on her body, especially on her legs.
In an incident of public humiliation, a group of about 15 men entered
a bank where 10 ethnic Chinese employees were taking refuge from
the riot. The men locked the door, made the women take off their
clothes and ordered them to dance.
In another incident of harassment during the riot in Jakarta, a
number of ethnic Chinese women were reportedly stripped and
made to swim in a filthy pond.
Nadia told of an ethnic Chinese woman who hid in her house with her two
younger sisters as the rioters approached. About 10 men came into the
house and found the sisters on the third floor. They made the two younger
women take off their clothes and told the older sister to stand in a corner,
“because you are too old for us.”
Meanwhile, arsonists entered the lower floors and set fire to the building.
“After they had raped her two sisters, the two men said to her, ‘We are
finished and we are satisfied and because you are too old and ugly we
weren’t interested in you.’ So they took her two sisters and pushed them to
the ground floor where there was already fire, and they were killed.
“When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died,” Nadia
said. “So now this woman is in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes she cries
when she tells the story and sometimes she is normal again. That is one of
the stories we have confirmed.”
In an effort to respond to the horror of these stories, which have shocked
many Indonesians, President B.J. Habibie on June 11 ordered the armed
forces to investigate “organized crimes” that helped provoke the riots.
Indonesian police have asked victims to report such cases. But so far, not a
single victim has done so, apparently fearing that to do so will do more
harm than good. A police spokesman said police cannot do much without a
report to investigate.
In another case, the English-language Jakarta Post newspaper reported that
Chinese in the Ciledug area in southern Jakarta had cleaned up a painted
‘BMC’ sign left by a unidentified person on one home’s front fence.
“I don’t know anything about the sign but my neighbors told me to quickly
remove it because the letters stand for Basmi Milik Cina (Destroy the
Chinese Property),” said a Chinese man.
Data from the Coordinating Body for National Unity (Bakom-PKB), a
government- controlled Chinese association, reveals that 1,286
Chinese-Indonesians have reported to the organization that they were
victims of the riots.
Chairwoman Rosita Noor, saying some of the helpless victims were raped
and molested by the mobs, asked the Indonesian military to give security
guarantees to Chinese Indonesians.
Accounts of Gang Rape of Chinese Women Emerge from Jakarta Riots
Andreas Harsono
American Reporter Correspondent
Jakarta, Indonesia
(06/13/98)
JAKARTA – Gruesome tales of brutal sexual and racist violence in
Indonesia have slowly begun to emerge here as social workers and human
rights advocates learn more of an organized campaign of assaults, gang
rapes and killings of ethnic Chinese women during three days of rioting in
Jakarta last month.
Indonesian media only reported the violence – initially only rumored on the
Internet and among the small Chinese community in Jakarta – after scores
of social workers, feminists and Chinese figures had announced the setting
up of a crisis center to help the victims.
“Tell me, what kind of human beings are evil enough to rape a 12-year-old
girl in front of her helpless parents?” asked Ita F. Nadia, the chairwoman of
Kalyanamitra, a women’s group which opened a telephone hotline for the
victims.
“They’re incredibly cruel and brutal,” said Nadia.
The establishment of the center, named the Solidaritas Nusa Bangsa or the
Solidarity of the Nation State, was announced in a meeting on June 5 in
Jakarta, during which Catholic priest Sandyawan Sumardi estimated that
dozens of Chinese women had died or committed suicide because of the
violence on May 14-16.
Sandyawan, who is known because of his work among Jakarta’s underclass
and has organized an investigation into the attack, said that the
anti-Chinese attack had shown a pattern of similarities and usually involved
“well-built men with [a] crew-cut hairstyle.”
The unidentified men generally began the violence by coming to a street in
a truck or a bus and attacking only one house on the street. They
encouraged other people in the area to join them in attacking the other
Chinese-owned houses in the vicinity and then looting their contents.
Although Sandyawan did not pinpoint any group, his statement is widely
intrepretated here to refer to military men. Rumors circulated widely here
that some high-ranking army officers were involved in the riots which
targeted the Chinese – the equivalent of here of Jews in Hitler’s Germany.
“They always threatened their victims not to talk to the media. They said
they could easily recognize those who speak up as they only attack one
house on every street,” said Sandyawan, adding that the provocateurs also
gang-raped Chinese women before leaving the street.
“We don’t know how many have been molested or forced to strip naked.
They obviously want to terrorize the Chinese and especially the women,”
she said.
Both Kolibonso and Nadia, who give legal and psychological counseling to
the victims, refused to provide their names to the media, saying that the
victims are extremely traumatized and that publication of their names might
endanger their lives.
The sudden resignation of Indonesian strongman Suharto on May 21
apparently overshadowed coverage of the brutal violence, as did the
student movement which helped forced Suharto to step down.
But rumors about the gang rapes started to emerge on the Net after the
riots, which saw more than 100 supermalls and thousands of shops and
houses burned to the ground. Jakarta hospitals recorded more than 1,100
deaths during the riots, mostly of looters or residents trapped in burning
buildings and homes. The riots are widely thought to be the worst in
Jakarta’s modern history.
Slowly and painfully, Kolibonso, Nadia and Sandyawan have compiled
accounts like the following from interviews with victims and witnesses:
A female Chinese student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a
swamp near the airport and raped by four men in a car. There was a
green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were
officers. “If you are police, you have to save me,” she told them.
One of them answered, “No, I have to give you a lesson. You are a
woman and you are beautiful and you are part of the Chinese.”
One young woman had a lucky escape after her taxi was stopped by
a mob in the middle of the night on May 14. She was forced out of
her taxi and forcibly stripped in front of the crowd. “Then a man
pushed through the crowd, pulled me out and gave me a Muslim
clothes to wear,” the woman recalled.
In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and
forced out all the non-Chinese women. “Then they chose the
beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the
bus,” Sandyawan said. “The victims of that incident are really
depressive. They are in the hospital with their families. They are
trying to hide themselves from the public.”
A 10-year-old girl returning from school discovered that the shop
and house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As
she went in search of her parents, she was seized by two men and
raped in front of her neighbors.
A man told the Indonesian Human Rights Commission about how
his wife’s attackers had mutilated her genitals with a razor blade after
first raping her. He also said about a friend’s wife drank pesticide
and committed suicide a few days after being raped.
One woman, a bank officer, told the Kompas newspaper that she
was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of rioters and
thrown to the ground by a group of men. The mob beat her
boyfriend, who could only asked for mercy. The Chinese girl was so
hysterical and so panicked that she does not remember what
happened. When she regained her consciousness, she said, she
saw many bruises on her body, especially on her legs.
In an incident of public humiliation, a group of about 15 men entered
a bank where 10 ethnic Chinese employees were taking refuge from
the riot. The men locked the door, made the women take off their
clothes and ordered them to dance.
In another incident of harassment during the riot in Jakarta, a
number of ethnic Chinese women were reportedly stripped and
made to swim in a filthy pond.
Nadia told of an ethnic Chinese woman who hid in her house with her two
younger sisters as the rioters approached. About 10 men came into the
house and found the sisters on the third floor. They made the two younger
women take off their clothes and told the older sister to stand in a corner,
“because you are too old for us.”
Meanwhile, arsonists entered the lower floors and set fire to the building.
“After they had raped her two sisters, the two men said to her, ‘We are
finished and we are satisfied and because you are too old and ugly we
weren’t interested in you.’ So they took her two sisters and pushed them to
the ground floor where there was already fire, and they were killed.
“When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died,” Nadia
said. “So now this woman is in a psychiatric hospital. Sometimes she cries
when she tells the story and sometimes she is normal again. That is one of
the stories we have confirmed.”
In an effort to respond to the horror of these stories, which have shocked
many Indonesians, President B.J. Habibie on June 11 ordered the armed
forces to investigate “organized crimes” that helped provoke the riots.
Indonesian police have asked victims to report such cases. But so far, not a
single victim has done so, apparently fearing that to do so will do more
harm than good. A police spokesman said police cannot do much without a
report to investigate.
In another case, the English-language Jakarta Post newspaper reported that
Chinese in the Ciledug area in southern Jakarta had cleaned up a painted
‘BMC’ sign left by a unidentified person on one home’s front fence.
“I don’t know anything about the sign but my neighbors told me to quickly
remove it because the letters stand for Basmi Milik Cina (Destroy the
Chinese Property),” said a Chinese man.
Data from the Coordinating Body for National Unity (Bakom-PKB), a
government- controlled Chinese association, reveals that 1,286
Chinese-Indonesians have reported to the organization that they were
victims of the riots.
Chairwoman Rosita Noor, saying some of the helpless victims were raped
and molested by the mobs, asked the Indonesian military to give security
guarantees to Chinese Indonesians.
THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia serach for place in society
http://www.fica.org/cs/dmn-mayriot-en
Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia search for place in society
Economically vital minority puts hope in new leadership
05/25/98
By Gregg Jones / The Dallas Morning News
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Aken Chandarn was ready to die alongside his wife when
the anti-Chinese mobs stopped outside his Chinatown furniture shop at the
height of the Jakarta riots two weeks ago.
The mob stoned his metal shutters and yelled for him to come out. But the
crowd gave up after a few minutes and moved on to easier prey.
On Sunday, Mr. Chandarn considered himself lucky as he and other Chinatown
business owners prepared to open for the first time since Indonesia's
latest explosion of anti-government and anti-Chinese anger left many parts
of the capital in ruins.
"Because they knew there were people inside my shop, they didn't burn it
down," said Mr. Chandarn, who is ethnic Chinese, calmly explaining the
quirky etiquette of Indonesia's street mobs.
Restoring the confidence of Indonesia's economically vital Chinese minority
is just one of the many challenges awaiting new President B.J. Habibie, who
last week succeeded his mentor Suharto, the strongman who ruled Indonesia
for 32 years.
After two centuries of being the economic whipping boy of the Indonesian
masses, the ethnic Chinese community has more than a passing interest in
the success or failure of Mr. Habibie.
"I'm worried because if the economy doesn't get better and the rupiah
doesn't get stronger, then in one month's time there will be another riot,"
Mr. Chandarn said, referring to the Indonesian currency.
One of his neighbors, 35-year-old Leni Wijaya, added: "We're praying that
Habibie will succeed."
With a new president in power, peace ruled the streets of Jakarta on
Sunday, and the soldiers sent to restore order were returning to the
barracks. The wealthy ethnic Chinese who could afford to ride out the
bloody riots in Hong Kong or Singapore were streaming back into Indonesia.
Even along Chinatown's burned and battered Gajah Mada boulevard, a work
crew was busy putting in new glass at a building badly damaged in the riots.
But the riots, along with the rumors that the Suharto regime offered up the
ethnic Chinese as a target to the disgruntled masses, have left the Chinese
community struggling once again to answer the question of whether there is
any place for them in Indonesian society.
"We're still worried about the riots," said businessman Antonius Djunadi,
33. "I hope that Habibie will improve the social gap between Indonesians
and the Chinese so there won't be so much resentment."
That resentment toward the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia has its roots in the
privileges bestowed upon ethnic Chinese by the Dutch during their colonial
rule of Indonesia. But the history of Indonesia's Chinese population is
much more complicated.
Dutch efforts to deport unemployed Chinese in 1740 resulted in unrest,
riots and the slaughter of between 5,000 and 10,000 Chinese in Jakarta
alone by Dutch forces.
By the time Indonesia became independent in 1945, the country's Chinese had
become a dominant force in its commerce. Indonesia's modern "masalah Cina,"
or Chinese problem, stems from the fact that ethnic Chinese make up only
about 3 percent of the population, yet control 80 percent of the wealth.
Middle-class Chinese point out that a handful of huge Chinese-owned
conglomerates actually dominate the economy - not the millions of ordinary
ethnic Chinese like Mr. Chandarn and the shopkeepers of Gajah Mada.
But that has done little to change public perceptions of the Chinese, who
became the periodic target of attacks and riots by indigenous Indonesians.
Johnni Lesmana, 55, was one of the victims in the latest riots. His drug
store was burned by a mob in a Jakarta suburb, and the cart he used to
peddle Chinese and Western remedies on the streets of Chinatown was also
trashed.
"These people are thieves, you know," said Mr. Lesmana, jumping up from his
stool and walking in agitated circles as he talked. "This is a stupid
mentality. Some of these people even raped Chinese women."
But leaving Indonesia is not an option for middle-class merchants like Mr.
Lesmana, who don't have the fabulous wealth of the conglomerate owners but
who always seem to bear the brunt of the violent resentment.
"I feel the same way as I did in 1965," said Mr. Lesmana, referring to the
year when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese were killed alongside
political activists in the aftermath of Suharto's rise to power. "It's so
scary. Those Chinese with money have gone abroad. Those who don't stay here
and wait to die."
Mr. Chandarn, 65, agreed. "No money, you die," he said, cutting loose with
a gallows-humor laugh as he helped Mr. Lesmana and a carpenter put the
finishing touches on a new wooden cart that will be his livelihood until he
can get a loan to reopen his burned drug store.
Up and down the streets of Chinatown, the broken glass and burned-out
buildings are testament to the frustrations directed at the Chinese. A
block from Mr. Chandarn's shop is the blackened shell of the Glodok Hotel,
where 10 looters died in fires set by other looters; down the street in the
other direction is a looted shopping center and department store.
Fifteen-year-old Tony - he would give only his first name - was in class at
Budimulia High School, a private Catholic high school for ethnic Chinese
children, when the rioting began to spread into Chinatown on May 14.
Parents rushed to pick up their children, but Tony was left waiting for a
ride until 11:30 a.m., he said.
Tony watched the violence and looting unfold as he peeked through a tiny
fourth-floor ventilation window. It was a horrifying sight, he said.
"People resent the fact that Chinese are more successful," he said.
The riots have had a painful impact on Tony and his family, he said.
"I'm disappointed and sad about what happened, and my parents are
disappointed," he said. "It makes us feel like a minority, like we're
different."
Mari Pangestu, one of Indonesian's most prominent economists, said Sunday
that the riots made her feel like a Chinese-Indonesian - rather than an
Indonesian - for the first time in her life.
A seventh-generation Chinese-Indonesian, Ms. Pangestu has never identified
much with her Chinese heritage. She grew up speaking Indonesian with her
parents, not Chinese. Indonesian culture, not Chinese, was the rule at home.
"We don't feel Chinese at all because we don't have any Chinese cultural
background," said Ms. Pangestu, who lives in a posh south Jakarta suburb,
miles away from the city's Chinatown.
Since she never identified much with the country's Chinese community, Ms.
Pangestu also never felt the fear that many ethnic Chinese feel when unrest
begins to simmer and riots break out in Indonesia. At least not until two
weeks ago, when mobs started searching cars en route to the airport to see
if the occupants were Chinese.
"For the first time, it hit me," she said. "I felt Chinese."
After a week of fear and dramatic political developments, the Sunday
evening mass was full at Jakarta's old Catholic cathedral, where many
Chinese worship. Sparrows fluttered beneath the cathedral's high ceiling in
the steamy twilight. A soldier in camouflage fatigues crossed himself and
slipped into an empty seat.
Prayers from Indonesia's largest mosque across the street wafted through
the air, serving as a reminder that even in their place of worship, ethnic
Chinese in Indonesia still can't escape the dominance of the Muslim majority.
Father Sugiri Van Den Heuvel, the parish priest, who has spent the past 46
years in Indonesia, said he has never witnessed anything like the
destruction wrought on his parish two weeks ago.
"Some lost their shops and homes. Some lost their relatives. Some were
murdered," he said. "This was done against people just because they were
Chinese."
Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia search for place in society
Economically vital minority puts hope in new leadership
05/25/98
By Gregg Jones / The Dallas Morning News
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Aken Chandarn was ready to die alongside his wife when
the anti-Chinese mobs stopped outside his Chinatown furniture shop at the
height of the Jakarta riots two weeks ago.
The mob stoned his metal shutters and yelled for him to come out. But the
crowd gave up after a few minutes and moved on to easier prey.
On Sunday, Mr. Chandarn considered himself lucky as he and other Chinatown
business owners prepared to open for the first time since Indonesia's
latest explosion of anti-government and anti-Chinese anger left many parts
of the capital in ruins.
"Because they knew there were people inside my shop, they didn't burn it
down," said Mr. Chandarn, who is ethnic Chinese, calmly explaining the
quirky etiquette of Indonesia's street mobs.
Restoring the confidence of Indonesia's economically vital Chinese minority
is just one of the many challenges awaiting new President B.J. Habibie, who
last week succeeded his mentor Suharto, the strongman who ruled Indonesia
for 32 years.
After two centuries of being the economic whipping boy of the Indonesian
masses, the ethnic Chinese community has more than a passing interest in
the success or failure of Mr. Habibie.
"I'm worried because if the economy doesn't get better and the rupiah
doesn't get stronger, then in one month's time there will be another riot,"
Mr. Chandarn said, referring to the Indonesian currency.
One of his neighbors, 35-year-old Leni Wijaya, added: "We're praying that
Habibie will succeed."
With a new president in power, peace ruled the streets of Jakarta on
Sunday, and the soldiers sent to restore order were returning to the
barracks. The wealthy ethnic Chinese who could afford to ride out the
bloody riots in Hong Kong or Singapore were streaming back into Indonesia.
Even along Chinatown's burned and battered Gajah Mada boulevard, a work
crew was busy putting in new glass at a building badly damaged in the riots.
But the riots, along with the rumors that the Suharto regime offered up the
ethnic Chinese as a target to the disgruntled masses, have left the Chinese
community struggling once again to answer the question of whether there is
any place for them in Indonesian society.
"We're still worried about the riots," said businessman Antonius Djunadi,
33. "I hope that Habibie will improve the social gap between Indonesians
and the Chinese so there won't be so much resentment."
That resentment toward the ethnic Chinese in Indonesia has its roots in the
privileges bestowed upon ethnic Chinese by the Dutch during their colonial
rule of Indonesia. But the history of Indonesia's Chinese population is
much more complicated.
Dutch efforts to deport unemployed Chinese in 1740 resulted in unrest,
riots and the slaughter of between 5,000 and 10,000 Chinese in Jakarta
alone by Dutch forces.
By the time Indonesia became independent in 1945, the country's Chinese had
become a dominant force in its commerce. Indonesia's modern "masalah Cina,"
or Chinese problem, stems from the fact that ethnic Chinese make up only
about 3 percent of the population, yet control 80 percent of the wealth.
Middle-class Chinese point out that a handful of huge Chinese-owned
conglomerates actually dominate the economy - not the millions of ordinary
ethnic Chinese like Mr. Chandarn and the shopkeepers of Gajah Mada.
But that has done little to change public perceptions of the Chinese, who
became the periodic target of attacks and riots by indigenous Indonesians.
Johnni Lesmana, 55, was one of the victims in the latest riots. His drug
store was burned by a mob in a Jakarta suburb, and the cart he used to
peddle Chinese and Western remedies on the streets of Chinatown was also
trashed.
"These people are thieves, you know," said Mr. Lesmana, jumping up from his
stool and walking in agitated circles as he talked. "This is a stupid
mentality. Some of these people even raped Chinese women."
But leaving Indonesia is not an option for middle-class merchants like Mr.
Lesmana, who don't have the fabulous wealth of the conglomerate owners but
who always seem to bear the brunt of the violent resentment.
"I feel the same way as I did in 1965," said Mr. Lesmana, referring to the
year when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Chinese were killed alongside
political activists in the aftermath of Suharto's rise to power. "It's so
scary. Those Chinese with money have gone abroad. Those who don't stay here
and wait to die."
Mr. Chandarn, 65, agreed. "No money, you die," he said, cutting loose with
a gallows-humor laugh as he helped Mr. Lesmana and a carpenter put the
finishing touches on a new wooden cart that will be his livelihood until he
can get a loan to reopen his burned drug store.
Up and down the streets of Chinatown, the broken glass and burned-out
buildings are testament to the frustrations directed at the Chinese. A
block from Mr. Chandarn's shop is the blackened shell of the Glodok Hotel,
where 10 looters died in fires set by other looters; down the street in the
other direction is a looted shopping center and department store.
Fifteen-year-old Tony - he would give only his first name - was in class at
Budimulia High School, a private Catholic high school for ethnic Chinese
children, when the rioting began to spread into Chinatown on May 14.
Parents rushed to pick up their children, but Tony was left waiting for a
ride until 11:30 a.m., he said.
Tony watched the violence and looting unfold as he peeked through a tiny
fourth-floor ventilation window. It was a horrifying sight, he said.
"People resent the fact that Chinese are more successful," he said.
The riots have had a painful impact on Tony and his family, he said.
"I'm disappointed and sad about what happened, and my parents are
disappointed," he said. "It makes us feel like a minority, like we're
different."
Mari Pangestu, one of Indonesian's most prominent economists, said Sunday
that the riots made her feel like a Chinese-Indonesian - rather than an
Indonesian - for the first time in her life.
A seventh-generation Chinese-Indonesian, Ms. Pangestu has never identified
much with her Chinese heritage. She grew up speaking Indonesian with her
parents, not Chinese. Indonesian culture, not Chinese, was the rule at home.
"We don't feel Chinese at all because we don't have any Chinese cultural
background," said Ms. Pangestu, who lives in a posh south Jakarta suburb,
miles away from the city's Chinatown.
Since she never identified much with the country's Chinese community, Ms.
Pangestu also never felt the fear that many ethnic Chinese feel when unrest
begins to simmer and riots break out in Indonesia. At least not until two
weeks ago, when mobs started searching cars en route to the airport to see
if the occupants were Chinese.
"For the first time, it hit me," she said. "I felt Chinese."
After a week of fear and dramatic political developments, the Sunday
evening mass was full at Jakarta's old Catholic cathedral, where many
Chinese worship. Sparrows fluttered beneath the cathedral's high ceiling in
the steamy twilight. A soldier in camouflage fatigues crossed himself and
slipped into an empty seat.
Prayers from Indonesia's largest mosque across the street wafted through
the air, serving as a reminder that even in their place of worship, ethnic
Chinese in Indonesia still can't escape the dominance of the Muslim majority.
Father Sugiri Van Den Heuvel, the parish priest, who has spent the past 46
years in Indonesia, said he has never witnessed anything like the
destruction wrought on his parish two weeks ago.
"Some lost their shops and homes. Some lost their relatives. Some were
murdered," he said. "This was done against people just because they were
Chinese."
PIONEER PRESS: Local Indonesian Lament Situation In Homeland
http://www.fica.org/cs/pp-mayriot-en
This article was published Sunday, May 17, 1998 in the Pioneer Press.
Local Indonesians lament situation in homeland
Students, immigrants worry about families suffering looting, harassment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JAMES ROMENESKO STAFF WRITER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander Sugianto, an Indonesian ethnic Chinese student at the
University of Minnesota, has several papers due by Memorial Day, but he
hasn't opened a book in days.
He sits by a telephone to wait for news from his parents, who are hiding
out in their Jakarta home after being attacked by an anti-Chinese mob last
Wednesday.
``I'm very concerned for their safety,'' Sugianto, 24, said Saturday. ``I
don't know if they will be alive after I put down the phone because
anything can happen.''
He is one of about 250 Indonesians living in the Twin Cities area, many of
them members of the Indonesian American Society of Minnesota -- a group
that has come together in recent days to compare what they're hearing of
the looting and rioting in their hometowns.
Sugianto said he feels helpless in Minnesota as his parents struggle with
a lost business and try to defend themselves against mobs that are
attacking the Indonesian Chinese. The ethnic Chinese make up less than 5
percent of the Indonesian population but own three-quarters of the
country's wealth, and they have been the targets of looting and arsons in
recent days.
Javanese are the dominant Indonesian ethnic group, followed by Sudanese,
Madurse and Malays. The archipelago nation is the world's fourth largest
-- behind China, India and the United States -- with a population of 209
million.
The Chinese are scapegoats for the country's economic problems, Sugianto
said.
``My parents' home is both a house and a motorbike shop,'' he said.
``Motorbike parts were stolen and the mob tried to burn two cars in the
shop, but one man who is not Chinese told the mob if they burned the cars,
the fire would spread and also burn non-Chinese houses. So they took the
cars out and burned them outside.''
His parents, who live above the shop, were not hurt. Without a car now,
they have decided to stay in their home and hide from the anti-Chinese
gangs.
``My parents thought that since the place already had been ransacked, they
wouldn't come back because there's nothing left to rob,'' Sugianto said.
`They thought that would be the safest place for them, but there is no
safe place in Jakarta as long as you're Chinese.''
Adi Mulawarman, a 24-year-old graduate student from the University of
Minnesota, said his parents' electrical appliance shop in Jakarta was
looted last week.
``They lost everything,'' said Mulawarman, who came to the United States
in 1992 to attend the university. ``They had been there 28 years. They got
a warning to close the shop at four in the afternoon. At five, people
started looting.''
Now they stay at home, fearful of being attacked.
``They just wait,'' he said of his parents. ``They can't go to the airport
because they've blocked the highways.''
Mulawarman said he's angry that his family can't get protection.
``The military just stands there when they see all these Chinese shops
being looted. And the Republic of China? They don't care. My whole life
I've hated both the Indonesian government and the Republic of China. It
seems like nobody wants us any more.''
Usman Suriono, a 29-year-old graduate student at the University of
Minnesota, said he has stayed close to his computer since the rioting
broke out. He gets about 300 e-mails daily from family and friends -- he
has more than 100 relatives in Indonesia -- trying to get news from the
pillaged areas.
He said he is not surprised that many once law-abiding residents have
joined students in the looting and rioting.
``The situation is so bad,'' said Suriono, who left Indonesia eight years
ago. ``They are running out of food, and things are getting worse, so they
think: `Why not just do it?' They have nothing to lose anyway.''
Rinto Dasuki, 35, president of the Indonesian American Society of
Minnesota, said the Chinese have been disliked by the Indonesian natives
and turned into scapegoats.
``This is not an economic problem; this is racial discrimination,'' he
said. ``I am the fifth generation (in Indonesia). We have been there
hundreds of years probably. But they still are making a difference between
me and what they call indigenous people. I am an Indonesian citizen, and I
cannot participate in politics. I couldn't run for mayor, I cannot enter
the military. And on your driver's license, they have a special mark that
says that you are Chinese. So it's gross evidence of real
discrimination.''
Dasuki said he monitors the situation in his homeland through Internet
mailing lists, which have given him some of the most accurate information
on the political strife.
``People in Jakarta find out what's happening and type it for the
reports,'' he said. ``It's not just one or two persons doing this, but
many. And that's very crucial because I heard all news now has to be
channeled through the government and is being censored.''
He said the online predictions are that the largest disturbances will
occur Wednesday.
``People are trying to organize all the campuses in Indonesia,'' he said.
``They are going to demonstrate on May 20 -- that's the day they're going
to do it. The situation is going to get worse.''
This article was published Sunday, May 17, 1998 in the Pioneer Press.
Local Indonesians lament situation in homeland
Students, immigrants worry about families suffering looting, harassment
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JAMES ROMENESKO STAFF WRITER
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alexander Sugianto, an Indonesian ethnic Chinese student at the
University of Minnesota, has several papers due by Memorial Day, but he
hasn't opened a book in days.
He sits by a telephone to wait for news from his parents, who are hiding
out in their Jakarta home after being attacked by an anti-Chinese mob last
Wednesday.
``I'm very concerned for their safety,'' Sugianto, 24, said Saturday. ``I
don't know if they will be alive after I put down the phone because
anything can happen.''
He is one of about 250 Indonesians living in the Twin Cities area, many of
them members of the Indonesian American Society of Minnesota -- a group
that has come together in recent days to compare what they're hearing of
the looting and rioting in their hometowns.
Sugianto said he feels helpless in Minnesota as his parents struggle with
a lost business and try to defend themselves against mobs that are
attacking the Indonesian Chinese. The ethnic Chinese make up less than 5
percent of the Indonesian population but own three-quarters of the
country's wealth, and they have been the targets of looting and arsons in
recent days.
Javanese are the dominant Indonesian ethnic group, followed by Sudanese,
Madurse and Malays. The archipelago nation is the world's fourth largest
-- behind China, India and the United States -- with a population of 209
million.
The Chinese are scapegoats for the country's economic problems, Sugianto
said.
``My parents' home is both a house and a motorbike shop,'' he said.
``Motorbike parts were stolen and the mob tried to burn two cars in the
shop, but one man who is not Chinese told the mob if they burned the cars,
the fire would spread and also burn non-Chinese houses. So they took the
cars out and burned them outside.''
His parents, who live above the shop, were not hurt. Without a car now,
they have decided to stay in their home and hide from the anti-Chinese
gangs.
``My parents thought that since the place already had been ransacked, they
wouldn't come back because there's nothing left to rob,'' Sugianto said.
`They thought that would be the safest place for them, but there is no
safe place in Jakarta as long as you're Chinese.''
Adi Mulawarman, a 24-year-old graduate student from the University of
Minnesota, said his parents' electrical appliance shop in Jakarta was
looted last week.
``They lost everything,'' said Mulawarman, who came to the United States
in 1992 to attend the university. ``They had been there 28 years. They got
a warning to close the shop at four in the afternoon. At five, people
started looting.''
Now they stay at home, fearful of being attacked.
``They just wait,'' he said of his parents. ``They can't go to the airport
because they've blocked the highways.''
Mulawarman said he's angry that his family can't get protection.
``The military just stands there when they see all these Chinese shops
being looted. And the Republic of China? They don't care. My whole life
I've hated both the Indonesian government and the Republic of China. It
seems like nobody wants us any more.''
Usman Suriono, a 29-year-old graduate student at the University of
Minnesota, said he has stayed close to his computer since the rioting
broke out. He gets about 300 e-mails daily from family and friends -- he
has more than 100 relatives in Indonesia -- trying to get news from the
pillaged areas.
He said he is not surprised that many once law-abiding residents have
joined students in the looting and rioting.
``The situation is so bad,'' said Suriono, who left Indonesia eight years
ago. ``They are running out of food, and things are getting worse, so they
think: `Why not just do it?' They have nothing to lose anyway.''
Rinto Dasuki, 35, president of the Indonesian American Society of
Minnesota, said the Chinese have been disliked by the Indonesian natives
and turned into scapegoats.
``This is not an economic problem; this is racial discrimination,'' he
said. ``I am the fifth generation (in Indonesia). We have been there
hundreds of years probably. But they still are making a difference between
me and what they call indigenous people. I am an Indonesian citizen, and I
cannot participate in politics. I couldn't run for mayor, I cannot enter
the military. And on your driver's license, they have a special mark that
says that you are Chinese. So it's gross evidence of real
discrimination.''
Dasuki said he monitors the situation in his homeland through Internet
mailing lists, which have given him some of the most accurate information
on the political strife.
``People in Jakarta find out what's happening and type it for the
reports,'' he said. ``It's not just one or two persons doing this, but
many. And that's very crucial because I heard all news now has to be
channeled through the government and is being censored.''
He said the online predictions are that the largest disturbances will
occur Wednesday.
``People are trying to organize all the campuses in Indonesia,'' he said.
``They are going to demonstrate on May 20 -- that's the day they're going
to do it. The situation is going to get worse.''
Saya Kapok Jadi Wanita Indonesia
http://www.fica.org/cs/mi-mayriot-id
Rabu, 1 Juli 1998
Saya Kapok Jadi Wanita.
Surat Terbuka untuk Menteri UPW
Oleh Melani Budianta,
Dosen Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia
OPINI & MEDIA ANDA SIKAP diam Ibu Menteri UPW di saat media massa dan tokoh-tokoh masyarakat ramai membicarakan masalah perkosaan dan pelecehan terhadap anak gadis dan perempuan, sungguh membangkitkan tanda tanya. Kasus yang terjadi pada peristiwa penjarahan tanggal 14 dan 15 Mei yang lalu sesungguhnya sangat menggugat nurani setiap orang yang peduli terhadap perempuan, dan saya yakin Ibu termasuk di antaranya.
Dalam tulisan ini saya mencoba mereka-reka sebab-sebab kebisuan Ibu dan mohon segera dikoreksi apabila keliru. Sebab saya khawatir hal ini sangat erat kaitannya dengan persoalan mendasar yang dihadapi kaum perempuan di negeri ini.
Dugaan pertama, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena merasa belum yakin dan hampir tidak percaya bahwa peristiwa semacam itu bisa terjadi di negeri yang berasaskan pada Pancasila. Ibu tidak punya bukti-bukti dan angka-angka yang pasti. Barangkali Ibu berpikir, bahwa jangan-jangan, ini cuma isu atau gosip yang ‘dibesar-besarkan’ untuk kepentingan politik tertentu. Dan Ibu tidak mau mengambil risiko.
Inilah sebuah kenyataan yang harus dihadapi kaum perempuan, hukum secara umum tidak berpihak padanya. Kekerasan terhadap kaum perempuan seringkali terjadi dalam wilayah tertutup yang tanpa saksi. Seringkali pula dilakukan oleh orang-orang yang diberi legalitas untuk melindungi atau mempunyai kekuasaan atas diri sang korban atau dalam wilayah publik yang penuh saksi manakala pelakunya tidak mungkin untuk dilacak kembali.
Padahal saksi dan pembuktian adalah dua kata kunci dalam prosedur hukum.
Selain itu korban-korban pelecehan seksual dan perkosaan merasa sangat malu, kehilangan harga diri dan semangat juang. Mereka umumnya memilih untuk diam, bersembunyi atau mati. Kalaupun ada yang berani bicara, adalah mereka berani mengambil risiko berat dipermalukan untuk kedua kalinya di hadapan penyidik, pengadilan atau media massa. Suatu yang tragis, bahwa dalam berbagai kasus tindak kekerasan terhadap perempuan, misalnya dalam kasus kekerasan dalam rumah tangga, calon korban seringkali sudah berusaha untuk minta tolong. Tapi atas dalih bukti yang tidak cukup, suara mereka dipantulkan kembali oleh tembok-tembok yang dingin.
Dengan kondisi seperti ini, maka statistik, angka-angka pembuktian biasanya hanya bisa dihitung dari jasad-jasad rusak kaum perempuan. Jadi Ibu, berapa banyak jasad rusak perempuankah yang diperlukan agar kasus ini layak dianggap tidak dibesar-besarkan?
Dugaan kedua, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena kasus ini menyangkut satu kelompok minoritas yang barangkali boleh diragukan kedudukannya sebagai orang Indonesia yang sejati dalam arti yang primordial atau berdasarkan takaran patriotismenya.
Tanpa berargumen tentang yang asli dan yang patriotis, satu hal sudah cukup
jelas bahwa masyarakat kita belum paham arti negara hukum dan demokrasi. Ini terjadi karena pendidikan politik yang telanjur salah kaprah. Sudah berpuluh-puluh tahun lamanya rakyat menyaksikan bagaimana hukum dipakai sebagai alat kekuasaan dan menonton bagaimana suara dan hak bicara diselewengkan. Akibatnya kita tidak tahu dan tidak bisa paham bahwa dalam negeri hukum dan tatanan yang demokratis bahkan musuh bebuyutan yang paling kita benci di muka bumi pun, harus kita hormati hak-hak sipilnya dan perlu kita perjuangkan haknya untuk mendapat perlindungan hukum.
Tapi saya berharap, mudah-mudahan dugaan kedua ini keliru. Sebab saya sudah menyaksikan sendiri, bagaimana kelompok perempuan, melalui berbagai gerakan solidaritas dan koalisi yang menonjol dalam gerakan reformasi, secara gigih meruntuhkan batas-batas sektarian dan primordial.
Simbol Pemanis
Ketika sedang maraknya pengelompokkan berdasarkan golongan dalam situasi krisis moneter, kaum perempuan membuat acara doa bersama antaragama. Dalam sidang-sidang pengadilan Karlina dan Romo Sandyawan, suster berkerudung dan perempuan berjilbab saling bergandengan tangan membagikan bunga dan bernyanyi. Mereka tidak pandang bulu, termasuk juga terhadap laki-laki yang ikut mendukung pergerakan mereka.
Dugaan ketiga, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena posisi Menteri UPW dalam wacana resmi negara lebih merupakan simbol pemanis untuk menutupi kondisi wanita yang buruk di negeri ini. Pertanyaannya, mengapa perlu ada departemen khusus urusan peranan wanita? Paling tidak ada empat kemungkinan jawaban. Kemungkinan pertama, karena Indonsesia sangat menghargai, menyanjung dan memuliakan kaum wanita. Kedua, atau sebaliknya karena kedudukan wanita sedemikian buruknya, sehingga perlu penanganan yang khusus. Ketiga, adalah gabungan keduanya, yakni untuk menunjukkan bagaimana hebatnya emansipasi wanita terjadi di negeri ini sehingga seorang wanita bisa menduduki jabatan menteri. Sehingga bisa memoles dan menutupi kondisi yang buruk seperti yang terjadi pada Marsinah dan kawan-kawannya. Dan kemungkinan keempat, karena peranan wanita dianggap penting, strategis, dapat dimanfaatkan sepenuhnya untuk berbagai kepentingan sosial, politik dan ekonomi, termasuk enambah devisa negara menjadi sumber tenaga gratis dan penunjang karier pejabat negara seperti organisasi Dharma Wanita.
Barangkali masih ada kepentingan lain yang terdaftar dalam arsip Ibu, yang luput saya amati. Tapi kalau dugaan saya benar, saya menuntut agar Ibu, sebagai menteri dalam kabinet yang bertekad untuk mengadakan reformasi agar segera membubarkan Dharma Wanita dan menghapus lembaga yang Ibu pimpin berikut segala jajarannya karena kehadiran dua institusi ini justru menjadi penghalang terwujudnya cita-cita emansipasi kaum perempuan.
Tidak ada yang bisa menolak diciptakan sebagai perempuan, sebagai manusia dengan golongan darah, warna kulit, raut wajah tertentu. Atau dilahirkan dalam golongan etnis, tempat dan zaman tertentu. Kalau memang seperti ditelusuri oleh para sejarawan, posisi kelompok Cina sudah mengandung luka sejarah, luka itu harus kita sembuhkan bersama. Jangan biarkan kaum perempuan, anak gadis berusia 12 tahun yang tidak berdosa menanggungnya.
***(Q-1)
(dimuat di Media Indonesia)
Rabu, 1 Juli 1998
Saya Kapok Jadi Wanita.
Surat Terbuka untuk Menteri UPW
Oleh Melani Budianta,
Dosen Fakultas Sastra Universitas Indonesia
OPINI & MEDIA ANDA SIKAP diam Ibu Menteri UPW di saat media massa dan tokoh-tokoh masyarakat ramai membicarakan masalah perkosaan dan pelecehan terhadap anak gadis dan perempuan, sungguh membangkitkan tanda tanya. Kasus yang terjadi pada peristiwa penjarahan tanggal 14 dan 15 Mei yang lalu sesungguhnya sangat menggugat nurani setiap orang yang peduli terhadap perempuan, dan saya yakin Ibu termasuk di antaranya.
Dalam tulisan ini saya mencoba mereka-reka sebab-sebab kebisuan Ibu dan mohon segera dikoreksi apabila keliru. Sebab saya khawatir hal ini sangat erat kaitannya dengan persoalan mendasar yang dihadapi kaum perempuan di negeri ini.
Dugaan pertama, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena merasa belum yakin dan hampir tidak percaya bahwa peristiwa semacam itu bisa terjadi di negeri yang berasaskan pada Pancasila. Ibu tidak punya bukti-bukti dan angka-angka yang pasti. Barangkali Ibu berpikir, bahwa jangan-jangan, ini cuma isu atau gosip yang ‘dibesar-besarkan’ untuk kepentingan politik tertentu. Dan Ibu tidak mau mengambil risiko.
Inilah sebuah kenyataan yang harus dihadapi kaum perempuan, hukum secara umum tidak berpihak padanya. Kekerasan terhadap kaum perempuan seringkali terjadi dalam wilayah tertutup yang tanpa saksi. Seringkali pula dilakukan oleh orang-orang yang diberi legalitas untuk melindungi atau mempunyai kekuasaan atas diri sang korban atau dalam wilayah publik yang penuh saksi manakala pelakunya tidak mungkin untuk dilacak kembali.
Padahal saksi dan pembuktian adalah dua kata kunci dalam prosedur hukum.
Selain itu korban-korban pelecehan seksual dan perkosaan merasa sangat malu, kehilangan harga diri dan semangat juang. Mereka umumnya memilih untuk diam, bersembunyi atau mati. Kalaupun ada yang berani bicara, adalah mereka berani mengambil risiko berat dipermalukan untuk kedua kalinya di hadapan penyidik, pengadilan atau media massa. Suatu yang tragis, bahwa dalam berbagai kasus tindak kekerasan terhadap perempuan, misalnya dalam kasus kekerasan dalam rumah tangga, calon korban seringkali sudah berusaha untuk minta tolong. Tapi atas dalih bukti yang tidak cukup, suara mereka dipantulkan kembali oleh tembok-tembok yang dingin.
Dengan kondisi seperti ini, maka statistik, angka-angka pembuktian biasanya hanya bisa dihitung dari jasad-jasad rusak kaum perempuan. Jadi Ibu, berapa banyak jasad rusak perempuankah yang diperlukan agar kasus ini layak dianggap tidak dibesar-besarkan?
Dugaan kedua, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena kasus ini menyangkut satu kelompok minoritas yang barangkali boleh diragukan kedudukannya sebagai orang Indonesia yang sejati dalam arti yang primordial atau berdasarkan takaran patriotismenya.
Tanpa berargumen tentang yang asli dan yang patriotis, satu hal sudah cukup
jelas bahwa masyarakat kita belum paham arti negara hukum dan demokrasi. Ini terjadi karena pendidikan politik yang telanjur salah kaprah. Sudah berpuluh-puluh tahun lamanya rakyat menyaksikan bagaimana hukum dipakai sebagai alat kekuasaan dan menonton bagaimana suara dan hak bicara diselewengkan. Akibatnya kita tidak tahu dan tidak bisa paham bahwa dalam negeri hukum dan tatanan yang demokratis bahkan musuh bebuyutan yang paling kita benci di muka bumi pun, harus kita hormati hak-hak sipilnya dan perlu kita perjuangkan haknya untuk mendapat perlindungan hukum.
Tapi saya berharap, mudah-mudahan dugaan kedua ini keliru. Sebab saya sudah menyaksikan sendiri, bagaimana kelompok perempuan, melalui berbagai gerakan solidaritas dan koalisi yang menonjol dalam gerakan reformasi, secara gigih meruntuhkan batas-batas sektarian dan primordial.
Simbol Pemanis
Ketika sedang maraknya pengelompokkan berdasarkan golongan dalam situasi krisis moneter, kaum perempuan membuat acara doa bersama antaragama. Dalam sidang-sidang pengadilan Karlina dan Romo Sandyawan, suster berkerudung dan perempuan berjilbab saling bergandengan tangan membagikan bunga dan bernyanyi. Mereka tidak pandang bulu, termasuk juga terhadap laki-laki yang ikut mendukung pergerakan mereka.
Dugaan ketiga, Ibu Menteri bersikap diam karena posisi Menteri UPW dalam wacana resmi negara lebih merupakan simbol pemanis untuk menutupi kondisi wanita yang buruk di negeri ini. Pertanyaannya, mengapa perlu ada departemen khusus urusan peranan wanita? Paling tidak ada empat kemungkinan jawaban. Kemungkinan pertama, karena Indonsesia sangat menghargai, menyanjung dan memuliakan kaum wanita. Kedua, atau sebaliknya karena kedudukan wanita sedemikian buruknya, sehingga perlu penanganan yang khusus. Ketiga, adalah gabungan keduanya, yakni untuk menunjukkan bagaimana hebatnya emansipasi wanita terjadi di negeri ini sehingga seorang wanita bisa menduduki jabatan menteri. Sehingga bisa memoles dan menutupi kondisi yang buruk seperti yang terjadi pada Marsinah dan kawan-kawannya. Dan kemungkinan keempat, karena peranan wanita dianggap penting, strategis, dapat dimanfaatkan sepenuhnya untuk berbagai kepentingan sosial, politik dan ekonomi, termasuk enambah devisa negara menjadi sumber tenaga gratis dan penunjang karier pejabat negara seperti organisasi Dharma Wanita.
Barangkali masih ada kepentingan lain yang terdaftar dalam arsip Ibu, yang luput saya amati. Tapi kalau dugaan saya benar, saya menuntut agar Ibu, sebagai menteri dalam kabinet yang bertekad untuk mengadakan reformasi agar segera membubarkan Dharma Wanita dan menghapus lembaga yang Ibu pimpin berikut segala jajarannya karena kehadiran dua institusi ini justru menjadi penghalang terwujudnya cita-cita emansipasi kaum perempuan.
Tidak ada yang bisa menolak diciptakan sebagai perempuan, sebagai manusia dengan golongan darah, warna kulit, raut wajah tertentu. Atau dilahirkan dalam golongan etnis, tempat dan zaman tertentu. Kalau memang seperti ditelusuri oleh para sejarawan, posisi kelompok Cina sudah mengandung luka sejarah, luka itu harus kita sembuhkan bersama. Jangan biarkan kaum perempuan, anak gadis berusia 12 tahun yang tidak berdosa menanggungnya.
***(Q-1)
(dimuat di Media Indonesia)
Ita Fatia Nadia, Tim Relawan:"Ini Murni Dari Hati Nurani..."
http://www.fica.org/cs/dr-mayriot-id
ITA FATIA NADIA, TIM RELAWAN: “INI MURNI DARI HATI NURANI...”
Sampai pekan lalu, sekitar 40 hari setelah kerusuhan pertengahan Mei lalu, Tim Relawan masih terus melakukan investigasi korban pemerkosaan dan kekerasan. Mereka tidak sekadar mendengar informasi lalu mencatat. Juga, mereka melakukan penyisiran lokasi dan pengecekan agar data benar-benar akurat. Hasilnya, menurut Ita Fatia Nadia, 40 tahun, Koordinator Kalyanamitra, sebuah lembaga swadaya masyarakat yang mengkhususkan diri dalam bidang kewanitaan, mereka telah mendata 182 korban, berusia antara 10 tahun dan 50 tahun – terbanyak, korban berusia antara 20 dan 30 tahun. Sebagian dari korban masih syok dan mengalami depresi; sejumlah korban tewas di saat peristiwa terjadi, ada yang bunuh diri, dan masih ada di antara korban terbaring di rumah sakit.
Tak mudah meminta Ita untuk menunjukkan di mana korban berada, hingga D&R bisa mengeceknya langsung. Ita enggan mengatakan, tapi ia meyakinkan bahwa semua yang ia katakan benar adanya. Memang, ia sendiri tak mengecek satu persatu; hanya beberapa di antara korban yang secara langsung ia temui.
Dan, Ita, yang bergabung di Kalyanamitra sejak tahun 1993, melakukan ini semua dengan ikhlas. Toh, ia mengaku beberapa kali menerima teror gelap, meminta agar ia dan timnya, Divisi Pendamping Korban, menghentikan kegiatannya mengidentifikasi korban. “Apa yang kami lakukan murni dari hati nurani, tidak ada ambisi politik sedikit pun,” katanya. Karena itu, meski ia kadang-kadang cemas juga, ia tetap menjalankan tugas kemanusiaan itu.
Berikut wawancara Puji Sumedi H dan Rustam F Mandayun dari D&R dengan ibu dua anak itu, di kantornya, di bilangan Kalibata, Jakarta Selatan, Sabtu malam, 27/6:
Mingguan D&R: Di masyarakat kini muncul isu, korban pemerkosaan ada yang hamil. Benar? ITA NADIA: Mereka masih mengalami trauma berat. Tidak sedikit dari mereka yang justru menutup mulut tak mau menceritakan apa yang dialaminya. Tidak hanya si korban pemerkosaan, melainkan juga keluarganya masih mengalami stres berat.
Sejauh yang kami ketahui, ada dua orang yang hamil. Seorang karyawati, ia lalu bunuh diri dengan minum Baygon. Satu lagi masih kami verifikasi, dia berumur 18 tahun dan bunuh diri baru seminggu yang lalu.
D&R: Bisa diceritakan cara kerja Tim Relawan? IN: Awalnya, kami membuat ‘hotline’ 24 jam, tidak ada libur. Ternyata, banyak informasi masuk, memberitahukan keberadaan korban. Si pemberitahu bisa teman, saudara, tetangga, orang tua, juga korban sendiri. Mereka memberikan alamat lokasi kejadian, waktu, dan juga keberadaan si korban sekarang.
Dari situ, kami melakukan investigasi dan menyisir ke lapangan untuk membuktikan kebenarannya. Kalau benar, kami catat. Jika ternyata mereka telah pergi ke luar Jakarta, tapi masih di Indonesia, bila ada relawan kami di situ, kami juga mencoba untuk menyisirnya. Misalnya, ada yang pergi ke Kalimantan.
Tak sedikit korban dan keluarganya yang kini berada di luar negeri karena takut dan trauma tinggal di Indonesia. Mereka biasanya menelepon kami dan memberitahukan dan membenarkan bahwa anggota keluarganya menjadi korban pemerkosaan.
Memang, tidak mudah melakukan identifikasi korban pemerkosaan. Tidak semudah seperti mengidentifikasi korban kebakaran. Yang kami temukan, kebanyakan pemerkosaan dilakukan tidak hanya oleh satu orang. Kami menyisir geografi, mulai dari daerah Jakarta Utara dan Jakarta Barat. Dari situ kami buat peta lokasi. Ternyata, paling banyak terjadi pemerkosaan di ruko-ruko (rumah toko) yang terletak di pinggir jalan besar, tempat kendaraan mudah lalu lalang, dan dekat dengan komunitas miskin di sekitarnya. Di daerah permukiman peristiwa itu terjadi juga, jika lokasinya dekat dengan ruko atau ada di belakang ruko-ruko itu, misalnya di Pantai Indah Kapuk. Dan umumnya, merupakan daerah pecinan menengah ke bawah.
D&R: Perbandingan korban di Jakarta Utara dengan Jakarta Barat? IN: Korban paling banyak di Jakarta Barat, di ruko dan kompleks elite. Di Jakarta Utara, tidak separah di Jakarta Barat.
Kami pernah mengecek apartemen Mitra Bahari di Jakarta Utara. Waktu kami datang, penghuninya sudah pergi semua. Pihak pengelola apartemen mengatakan tidak ada korban pemerkosaan di sana. Tapi, kami mendapat telpon langsung dari penghuni Mitra Bahari yang kini berada di luar negeri, membenarkan kalau anggota keluarganya jadi korban pemerkosaan.
D&R: Bagaimana dengan korban yang bernama samaran “Vivian” yang di internet itu? IN: Soal Vivian, kami tidak mendapat laporan. Tapi, korban lain yang tinggal di apartemen Mitra Bahari. Yang ini pun sangat sulit investigasinya. Mereka yang tinggal di ruko-ruko dekat apartemen itu sekarang tutup mulut, katanya mereka diteror.
Temuan di Mitra Bahari itu akan kami verifikasikan lagi. Umumnya, mereka telah banyak yang pergi ke Singapura, Hongkong, Australia, Taiwan, dan Kanada. Hampir setiap malam kami mendapat telepon dari mereka dan mengatakan anggota keluarganya jadi korban dan sekarang masih berobat di luar negeri.
D&R: Korban-korban yang Anda data hanya diperkosa? IN: Pertama, ada korban tak diperkosa, cuma ditelanjangi lalu dianiaya. Kedua, korban diperkosa dan dianiaya. Saya diundang ke Singapura oleh seorang ayah untuk menengok anaknya yang kini masih terbaring di sebuah klinik di Singapura. Anak itu berusia 18 tahun, diperkosa dan dianiaya. Saya diminta menyaksikan langsung bahwa anaknya benar-benar menjadi korban. Lalu di Solo, sampai kini masih ada yang koma di sebuah rumah sakit karena diperkosa.
Ketiga, korban diperkosa lalu dibunuh atau terbunuh. Seorang wanita memberikan kesaksian bahwa dua adik perempuannya, berusia 22 dan 18 tahun, tanggal 14 Mei sore, diperkosa di rukonya oleh tujuh laki-laki asing yang menyerang rukonya. Tak cuma itu, selesai memperkosa, beberapa dari pelaku turun ke lantai satu dan membakar ruko itu. Saat itu pula, adiknya dilemparkan ke dalam api oleh mereka. Saat itu, wanita setengah baya itu hanya bisa menjerit memanggil nama dua adiknya. Dia sempat melarikan diri, ditolong oleh masyarakat pribumi di sekitarnya.
Menurut wanita tadi, ruko-ruko di sekitarnya pun bernasib serupa.
D&R: Apa yang bisa disimpulkan? IN: Hasil investigasi kami, kekerasan itu dilakukan oleh 3-10 orang. Waktunya, tanggal 13-15 Mei, puncaknya terjadi tanggal 14 Mei. Kejadiannya diawali dengan penyerangan dan perusakan, lalu pemerkosaan, dan terakhir pembakaran. Para pelaku bukan dari penduduk sekitar, karena para keluarga korban mengaku belum pernah mengenalnya sebelumnya.
Menurut saksi yang lain, para penyerang, perusak, dan pemerkosa tersebut berbeda dengan yang melakukan penjarahan. Para penjarah memang ada yang dari masyarakat sekitar, tapi cuma sekadar menjarah. Yang melakukan pemerkosaan dan pembakaran tidak dikenal.
Itu tak cuma terjadi di Jakarta. Di Medan juga terjadi, tapi baru tiga orang melapor ke Kalyanamitra, di Palembang satu orang.
D&R: Antara pemerkosa dan penjarah berbeda? IN: Penyerang datang, lalu merusak dan memperkosa, setelah itu merangsang penduduk untuk melakukan penjarahan. Setelah massa masuk, gedung dibakar. Kejadian ini benar-benar merupakan paket teror dan pengalihan pelaku, sehingga sangat sulit untuk mengidentifikasi pelaku sebenarnya.
D&R: Menurut Anda, kenapa sampai terjadi pemerkosaan? IN: Karena pemerkosaan menjadi alat yang mudah untuk menteror sebuah keluarga, dan karena si korban umumnya akan menutup diri.
D&R: Mungkinkah pelaku diadili? IN: Itulah sulitnya. Menteri Kehakiman Muladi sendiri pernah bilang agar pelaku segera ditangkap. Sangat sulit sekali itu. Apalagi dalam kasus pemerkosaan, harus ada saksi. Sekarang saja mereka yang mungkin menjadi saksi sebagian besar sudah banyak yang diteror lewat telepon. Kami saja dalam melakukan pendekatan mengalami kesulitan dan butuh waktu lama. Mula-mula kami berupaya membangun kepercayaan agar mau bercerita. Barulah setelah mereka percaya betul, mereka mengizinkan relawan datang ke tempat tinggalnya, dan biasanya malam hari.
Selain melakukan investigasi, kami pun melakukan pendampingan untuk korban dan keluarganya, secara psikologis dan medis. Kami juga menyelenggarkan “Rumah Aman” yang bisa menampung mereka.
D&R: Ada imbauan agar korban melapor kepada aparat akhir-akhir ini... IN: Tidak akan mudah korban pemerkosaan melapor kepada aparat. Saat ini trauma mereka belum hilang.
Pihak kepolisian cukup baik. Mereka pun melakukan investigasi dengan caranya dan mereka juga datang kemari untuk bertukar pikiran. Pernah mereka meminta data tapi kami menolak. Kami minta mereka pun mencari, barulah data dia dan data kami di-’cross-check’.
D&R: Jumlah Tim Relawan sekarang berapa? IN: Sampai sekarang sekitar 400 orang. Mereka terdiri dari dokter umum, dokter spesialis, rohaniwan, psikolog, ahli bahasa Cina dari semua jenis – ini disebut tim ahli. Ada tim pendamping, yang saya koordinator umumnya. Lalu, ada pula koordinator ‘hotline’, koordinator relawan, koordinator kawan konseling.
Mengapa kami perlu ahli bahasa Mandarin? Rata-rata dari korban yang didampingi tidak mau berbicara lagi dalam bahasa Indonesia. Mereka ingin menghilangan memori itu. Padahal, mereka lahir dan dibesarkan di sini. Tapi itu hal wajar, dalam kondisi seperti itu adalah wajar. Secara psikologis mereka ingin menghilangkan memori yang sangat menyakitkan dan membuatnya trauma.
D&R: Apa yang dimaksud dengan “Rumah Aman”? IN: Sebuah bangunan tempat para korban dan keluarganya tinggal untuk memperoleh perlindungan dan rasa aman, dan memperoleh ketenangan spiritual. Dia tahu bahwa ada orang lain yang menemaninya. Di rumah itu ada ‘volunteer’ yang terpilih benar, dokter umum, psikolog, ginekolog, psikiatri, rohaniwan.
Tapi, ada pula yang masih dirawat di rumah sakit. Kalau dia masuk rumah sakit atas inisiatif sendiri, itu merupakan hak prerogatif rumah sakit. Kami tidak bisa mengutik-utik. Tapi, kalau si korban masuk rumah sakit atas rujukan dari kami, akan ada anggota relawan yang mendampinginya. Dan, rumah sakitnya tidak sembarang rumah sakit, melainkan rumah sakit yang bisa menjadi “rumah aman” kedua untuk korban.
D&R: Sekarang apakah masih dilakukan investigasi dan verifikasi? IN: Kami pun masih terus melacak. Kini sudah tercatat 182 orang korban, dan agaknya masih akan bertambah lagi jumlahnya. Sore tadi , kami baru mendapat informasi, seorang ‘teller’ bank jadi korban pemerkosaan, tak pernah keluar rumah sebulan lebih karena trauma. Ternyata kini dia meninggalkan rumah entah ke mana. Kami sedang melakukan pencarian. Lalu, seorang ibu yang anaknya diperkosa dan dibakar mengalami stres. Dia pun meninggalkan rumah, dan kami pun sedang melakukan pencarian juga.
D&R: Menteri Urusan Peranan Wanita menyatakan belum menemukan satu pun korban pemerkosaan ... IN: Itu aneh. Memang, setelah Menteri mengeluarkan pernyataan, ada stafnya yang mengontak kami untuk meminta data. Tapi, kami tidak memberikannya. Kami sengaja merahasiakan, karena ini merupakan kepercayaan dari para korban dan keluarganya. Kami tidak bisa mempertaruhkan kepercayaan mereka. Yang penting, apa yang kami lakukan bersama tim relawan yang lain benar-benar atas dorongan hati nurani. Sama sekali tidak ada ambisi politisnya.
D&R: Apakah Tim Relawan mendapat teror? IN: Setelah Romo Sandy mendapat kiriman granat, saya juga ditelepon suatu malam, Katanya, “Mbak Ita kan sekeretaris II Romo Sandy di Tim Relawan. Apakah tidak cukup dikirimi granat. Apa mau yang lebih dari itu?” Saya mencoba berdialog, karena saya yakin dia punya atasan. Saya minta agar saya dan Romo Sandy bisa dipertemukan dengan atasannya untuk berdialog. Saya coba yakinkan kepadanya bahwa yang kami lakukan murni dari hati nurani tanpa ambisi politik sedikit pun. Telepon langsung ditutup.
Dari Badan Intelijen ABRI pun datang kemari dua orang. Mereka ingin meminta data dengan alasan untuk menepis bahwa yang terjadi tidak benar. Mereka menyatakan, bagaimana bisa masyarakat Indonesia melakukan ini semua. Mereka minta agar kegiatan Tim Relawan dihentikan karena berita tersebut berdampak jelek di luar negeri.
Lalu, saya juga mendapat telepon, orang itu tahu benar saya punya dua anak, nama dan alamat sekolah anak saya, malah seragam dan jam berangkat dan pulang sekolah pun dia tahu. Dia meminta agar saya berhenti berkampanye. Sebagai seorang ibu, saya khawatir. Tapi, bukan lantas saya menyerah. Saya percaya pada hati nurani. Tapi ini harus dihadapi. Tim Relawan akan tetap jadi teman dan mendampingi korban.
Dan kami, apa pun yang terjadi, tidak akan memberikan nama dan data korban karena itu merupakan rahasia. Kami hanya mencoba membangun kepercayaan, memulihkan dirinya sebagai manusia dan anggota masyarakat.
D&R: Anda pernah bertemu korban? IN: Saya adalah koordinator umum. Saya harus tunduk pada aturan, tidak bisa sembarang orang menangani korban. Saya menampung semuanya. Kalau korban datang ke sini, saya melihatnya. Tiap malam, saya pun ikut menerima telepon dari para korban yang selalu mengontak kemari.
Saya melihat sendiri korban karena saya dijemput untuk menengoknya. Dua perempuan, satu orang 21 tahun dan 19 tahun, mengalami penganiayaan berat. Tanggal 6 Juni lalu, mereka operasi di luar negeri. Kedua korban tak sampai diperkosa. Mreeka dicegat di daerah jalan layang arah Kebon Jeruk, diserang lalu ditelanjangi. Mereka bisa lari, ditolong oleh seorang tukang ojek dan dipinjami jaket si tukang ojek. Yang satu diselamatkan seorang sopir taksi. Menurut kedua korban, mereka melihat hal serupa yang mereka alami di sekitarnya.
D&R: Anda mengatakan sampai kini mereka masih trauma. Apa yang mereka lakukan, misalnya? IN: Saya pernah diundang oleh suatu komunitas di Jakarta Barat. Mereka ini membawa pisau ke mana-mana, bahkan ke kamar mandi sekalipun. Umumnya pisau tak pernah lepas dari tangannya.***
[Mingguan D&R, no.46, Th.XXIX, 4 Juli 1998]
ITA FATIA NADIA, TIM RELAWAN: “INI MURNI DARI HATI NURANI...”
Sampai pekan lalu, sekitar 40 hari setelah kerusuhan pertengahan Mei lalu, Tim Relawan masih terus melakukan investigasi korban pemerkosaan dan kekerasan. Mereka tidak sekadar mendengar informasi lalu mencatat. Juga, mereka melakukan penyisiran lokasi dan pengecekan agar data benar-benar akurat. Hasilnya, menurut Ita Fatia Nadia, 40 tahun, Koordinator Kalyanamitra, sebuah lembaga swadaya masyarakat yang mengkhususkan diri dalam bidang kewanitaan, mereka telah mendata 182 korban, berusia antara 10 tahun dan 50 tahun – terbanyak, korban berusia antara 20 dan 30 tahun. Sebagian dari korban masih syok dan mengalami depresi; sejumlah korban tewas di saat peristiwa terjadi, ada yang bunuh diri, dan masih ada di antara korban terbaring di rumah sakit.
Tak mudah meminta Ita untuk menunjukkan di mana korban berada, hingga D&R bisa mengeceknya langsung. Ita enggan mengatakan, tapi ia meyakinkan bahwa semua yang ia katakan benar adanya. Memang, ia sendiri tak mengecek satu persatu; hanya beberapa di antara korban yang secara langsung ia temui.
Dan, Ita, yang bergabung di Kalyanamitra sejak tahun 1993, melakukan ini semua dengan ikhlas. Toh, ia mengaku beberapa kali menerima teror gelap, meminta agar ia dan timnya, Divisi Pendamping Korban, menghentikan kegiatannya mengidentifikasi korban. “Apa yang kami lakukan murni dari hati nurani, tidak ada ambisi politik sedikit pun,” katanya. Karena itu, meski ia kadang-kadang cemas juga, ia tetap menjalankan tugas kemanusiaan itu.
Berikut wawancara Puji Sumedi H dan Rustam F Mandayun dari D&R dengan ibu dua anak itu, di kantornya, di bilangan Kalibata, Jakarta Selatan, Sabtu malam, 27/6:
Mingguan D&R: Di masyarakat kini muncul isu, korban pemerkosaan ada yang hamil. Benar? ITA NADIA: Mereka masih mengalami trauma berat. Tidak sedikit dari mereka yang justru menutup mulut tak mau menceritakan apa yang dialaminya. Tidak hanya si korban pemerkosaan, melainkan juga keluarganya masih mengalami stres berat.
Sejauh yang kami ketahui, ada dua orang yang hamil. Seorang karyawati, ia lalu bunuh diri dengan minum Baygon. Satu lagi masih kami verifikasi, dia berumur 18 tahun dan bunuh diri baru seminggu yang lalu.
D&R: Bisa diceritakan cara kerja Tim Relawan? IN: Awalnya, kami membuat ‘hotline’ 24 jam, tidak ada libur. Ternyata, banyak informasi masuk, memberitahukan keberadaan korban. Si pemberitahu bisa teman, saudara, tetangga, orang tua, juga korban sendiri. Mereka memberikan alamat lokasi kejadian, waktu, dan juga keberadaan si korban sekarang.
Dari situ, kami melakukan investigasi dan menyisir ke lapangan untuk membuktikan kebenarannya. Kalau benar, kami catat. Jika ternyata mereka telah pergi ke luar Jakarta, tapi masih di Indonesia, bila ada relawan kami di situ, kami juga mencoba untuk menyisirnya. Misalnya, ada yang pergi ke Kalimantan.
Tak sedikit korban dan keluarganya yang kini berada di luar negeri karena takut dan trauma tinggal di Indonesia. Mereka biasanya menelepon kami dan memberitahukan dan membenarkan bahwa anggota keluarganya menjadi korban pemerkosaan.
Memang, tidak mudah melakukan identifikasi korban pemerkosaan. Tidak semudah seperti mengidentifikasi korban kebakaran. Yang kami temukan, kebanyakan pemerkosaan dilakukan tidak hanya oleh satu orang. Kami menyisir geografi, mulai dari daerah Jakarta Utara dan Jakarta Barat. Dari situ kami buat peta lokasi. Ternyata, paling banyak terjadi pemerkosaan di ruko-ruko (rumah toko) yang terletak di pinggir jalan besar, tempat kendaraan mudah lalu lalang, dan dekat dengan komunitas miskin di sekitarnya. Di daerah permukiman peristiwa itu terjadi juga, jika lokasinya dekat dengan ruko atau ada di belakang ruko-ruko itu, misalnya di Pantai Indah Kapuk. Dan umumnya, merupakan daerah pecinan menengah ke bawah.
D&R: Perbandingan korban di Jakarta Utara dengan Jakarta Barat? IN: Korban paling banyak di Jakarta Barat, di ruko dan kompleks elite. Di Jakarta Utara, tidak separah di Jakarta Barat.
Kami pernah mengecek apartemen Mitra Bahari di Jakarta Utara. Waktu kami datang, penghuninya sudah pergi semua. Pihak pengelola apartemen mengatakan tidak ada korban pemerkosaan di sana. Tapi, kami mendapat telpon langsung dari penghuni Mitra Bahari yang kini berada di luar negeri, membenarkan kalau anggota keluarganya jadi korban pemerkosaan.
D&R: Bagaimana dengan korban yang bernama samaran “Vivian” yang di internet itu? IN: Soal Vivian, kami tidak mendapat laporan. Tapi, korban lain yang tinggal di apartemen Mitra Bahari. Yang ini pun sangat sulit investigasinya. Mereka yang tinggal di ruko-ruko dekat apartemen itu sekarang tutup mulut, katanya mereka diteror.
Temuan di Mitra Bahari itu akan kami verifikasikan lagi. Umumnya, mereka telah banyak yang pergi ke Singapura, Hongkong, Australia, Taiwan, dan Kanada. Hampir setiap malam kami mendapat telepon dari mereka dan mengatakan anggota keluarganya jadi korban dan sekarang masih berobat di luar negeri.
D&R: Korban-korban yang Anda data hanya diperkosa? IN: Pertama, ada korban tak diperkosa, cuma ditelanjangi lalu dianiaya. Kedua, korban diperkosa dan dianiaya. Saya diundang ke Singapura oleh seorang ayah untuk menengok anaknya yang kini masih terbaring di sebuah klinik di Singapura. Anak itu berusia 18 tahun, diperkosa dan dianiaya. Saya diminta menyaksikan langsung bahwa anaknya benar-benar menjadi korban. Lalu di Solo, sampai kini masih ada yang koma di sebuah rumah sakit karena diperkosa.
Ketiga, korban diperkosa lalu dibunuh atau terbunuh. Seorang wanita memberikan kesaksian bahwa dua adik perempuannya, berusia 22 dan 18 tahun, tanggal 14 Mei sore, diperkosa di rukonya oleh tujuh laki-laki asing yang menyerang rukonya. Tak cuma itu, selesai memperkosa, beberapa dari pelaku turun ke lantai satu dan membakar ruko itu. Saat itu pula, adiknya dilemparkan ke dalam api oleh mereka. Saat itu, wanita setengah baya itu hanya bisa menjerit memanggil nama dua adiknya. Dia sempat melarikan diri, ditolong oleh masyarakat pribumi di sekitarnya.
Menurut wanita tadi, ruko-ruko di sekitarnya pun bernasib serupa.
D&R: Apa yang bisa disimpulkan? IN: Hasil investigasi kami, kekerasan itu dilakukan oleh 3-10 orang. Waktunya, tanggal 13-15 Mei, puncaknya terjadi tanggal 14 Mei. Kejadiannya diawali dengan penyerangan dan perusakan, lalu pemerkosaan, dan terakhir pembakaran. Para pelaku bukan dari penduduk sekitar, karena para keluarga korban mengaku belum pernah mengenalnya sebelumnya.
Menurut saksi yang lain, para penyerang, perusak, dan pemerkosa tersebut berbeda dengan yang melakukan penjarahan. Para penjarah memang ada yang dari masyarakat sekitar, tapi cuma sekadar menjarah. Yang melakukan pemerkosaan dan pembakaran tidak dikenal.
Itu tak cuma terjadi di Jakarta. Di Medan juga terjadi, tapi baru tiga orang melapor ke Kalyanamitra, di Palembang satu orang.
D&R: Antara pemerkosa dan penjarah berbeda? IN: Penyerang datang, lalu merusak dan memperkosa, setelah itu merangsang penduduk untuk melakukan penjarahan. Setelah massa masuk, gedung dibakar. Kejadian ini benar-benar merupakan paket teror dan pengalihan pelaku, sehingga sangat sulit untuk mengidentifikasi pelaku sebenarnya.
D&R: Menurut Anda, kenapa sampai terjadi pemerkosaan? IN: Karena pemerkosaan menjadi alat yang mudah untuk menteror sebuah keluarga, dan karena si korban umumnya akan menutup diri.
D&R: Mungkinkah pelaku diadili? IN: Itulah sulitnya. Menteri Kehakiman Muladi sendiri pernah bilang agar pelaku segera ditangkap. Sangat sulit sekali itu. Apalagi dalam kasus pemerkosaan, harus ada saksi. Sekarang saja mereka yang mungkin menjadi saksi sebagian besar sudah banyak yang diteror lewat telepon. Kami saja dalam melakukan pendekatan mengalami kesulitan dan butuh waktu lama. Mula-mula kami berupaya membangun kepercayaan agar mau bercerita. Barulah setelah mereka percaya betul, mereka mengizinkan relawan datang ke tempat tinggalnya, dan biasanya malam hari.
Selain melakukan investigasi, kami pun melakukan pendampingan untuk korban dan keluarganya, secara psikologis dan medis. Kami juga menyelenggarkan “Rumah Aman” yang bisa menampung mereka.
D&R: Ada imbauan agar korban melapor kepada aparat akhir-akhir ini... IN: Tidak akan mudah korban pemerkosaan melapor kepada aparat. Saat ini trauma mereka belum hilang.
Pihak kepolisian cukup baik. Mereka pun melakukan investigasi dengan caranya dan mereka juga datang kemari untuk bertukar pikiran. Pernah mereka meminta data tapi kami menolak. Kami minta mereka pun mencari, barulah data dia dan data kami di-’cross-check’.
D&R: Jumlah Tim Relawan sekarang berapa? IN: Sampai sekarang sekitar 400 orang. Mereka terdiri dari dokter umum, dokter spesialis, rohaniwan, psikolog, ahli bahasa Cina dari semua jenis – ini disebut tim ahli. Ada tim pendamping, yang saya koordinator umumnya. Lalu, ada pula koordinator ‘hotline’, koordinator relawan, koordinator kawan konseling.
Mengapa kami perlu ahli bahasa Mandarin? Rata-rata dari korban yang didampingi tidak mau berbicara lagi dalam bahasa Indonesia. Mereka ingin menghilangan memori itu. Padahal, mereka lahir dan dibesarkan di sini. Tapi itu hal wajar, dalam kondisi seperti itu adalah wajar. Secara psikologis mereka ingin menghilangkan memori yang sangat menyakitkan dan membuatnya trauma.
D&R: Apa yang dimaksud dengan “Rumah Aman”? IN: Sebuah bangunan tempat para korban dan keluarganya tinggal untuk memperoleh perlindungan dan rasa aman, dan memperoleh ketenangan spiritual. Dia tahu bahwa ada orang lain yang menemaninya. Di rumah itu ada ‘volunteer’ yang terpilih benar, dokter umum, psikolog, ginekolog, psikiatri, rohaniwan.
Tapi, ada pula yang masih dirawat di rumah sakit. Kalau dia masuk rumah sakit atas inisiatif sendiri, itu merupakan hak prerogatif rumah sakit. Kami tidak bisa mengutik-utik. Tapi, kalau si korban masuk rumah sakit atas rujukan dari kami, akan ada anggota relawan yang mendampinginya. Dan, rumah sakitnya tidak sembarang rumah sakit, melainkan rumah sakit yang bisa menjadi “rumah aman” kedua untuk korban.
D&R: Sekarang apakah masih dilakukan investigasi dan verifikasi? IN: Kami pun masih terus melacak. Kini sudah tercatat 182 orang korban, dan agaknya masih akan bertambah lagi jumlahnya. Sore tadi , kami baru mendapat informasi, seorang ‘teller’ bank jadi korban pemerkosaan, tak pernah keluar rumah sebulan lebih karena trauma. Ternyata kini dia meninggalkan rumah entah ke mana. Kami sedang melakukan pencarian. Lalu, seorang ibu yang anaknya diperkosa dan dibakar mengalami stres. Dia pun meninggalkan rumah, dan kami pun sedang melakukan pencarian juga.
D&R: Menteri Urusan Peranan Wanita menyatakan belum menemukan satu pun korban pemerkosaan ... IN: Itu aneh. Memang, setelah Menteri mengeluarkan pernyataan, ada stafnya yang mengontak kami untuk meminta data. Tapi, kami tidak memberikannya. Kami sengaja merahasiakan, karena ini merupakan kepercayaan dari para korban dan keluarganya. Kami tidak bisa mempertaruhkan kepercayaan mereka. Yang penting, apa yang kami lakukan bersama tim relawan yang lain benar-benar atas dorongan hati nurani. Sama sekali tidak ada ambisi politisnya.
D&R: Apakah Tim Relawan mendapat teror? IN: Setelah Romo Sandy mendapat kiriman granat, saya juga ditelepon suatu malam, Katanya, “Mbak Ita kan sekeretaris II Romo Sandy di Tim Relawan. Apakah tidak cukup dikirimi granat. Apa mau yang lebih dari itu?” Saya mencoba berdialog, karena saya yakin dia punya atasan. Saya minta agar saya dan Romo Sandy bisa dipertemukan dengan atasannya untuk berdialog. Saya coba yakinkan kepadanya bahwa yang kami lakukan murni dari hati nurani tanpa ambisi politik sedikit pun. Telepon langsung ditutup.
Dari Badan Intelijen ABRI pun datang kemari dua orang. Mereka ingin meminta data dengan alasan untuk menepis bahwa yang terjadi tidak benar. Mereka menyatakan, bagaimana bisa masyarakat Indonesia melakukan ini semua. Mereka minta agar kegiatan Tim Relawan dihentikan karena berita tersebut berdampak jelek di luar negeri.
Lalu, saya juga mendapat telepon, orang itu tahu benar saya punya dua anak, nama dan alamat sekolah anak saya, malah seragam dan jam berangkat dan pulang sekolah pun dia tahu. Dia meminta agar saya berhenti berkampanye. Sebagai seorang ibu, saya khawatir. Tapi, bukan lantas saya menyerah. Saya percaya pada hati nurani. Tapi ini harus dihadapi. Tim Relawan akan tetap jadi teman dan mendampingi korban.
Dan kami, apa pun yang terjadi, tidak akan memberikan nama dan data korban karena itu merupakan rahasia. Kami hanya mencoba membangun kepercayaan, memulihkan dirinya sebagai manusia dan anggota masyarakat.
D&R: Anda pernah bertemu korban? IN: Saya adalah koordinator umum. Saya harus tunduk pada aturan, tidak bisa sembarang orang menangani korban. Saya menampung semuanya. Kalau korban datang ke sini, saya melihatnya. Tiap malam, saya pun ikut menerima telepon dari para korban yang selalu mengontak kemari.
Saya melihat sendiri korban karena saya dijemput untuk menengoknya. Dua perempuan, satu orang 21 tahun dan 19 tahun, mengalami penganiayaan berat. Tanggal 6 Juni lalu, mereka operasi di luar negeri. Kedua korban tak sampai diperkosa. Mreeka dicegat di daerah jalan layang arah Kebon Jeruk, diserang lalu ditelanjangi. Mereka bisa lari, ditolong oleh seorang tukang ojek dan dipinjami jaket si tukang ojek. Yang satu diselamatkan seorang sopir taksi. Menurut kedua korban, mereka melihat hal serupa yang mereka alami di sekitarnya.
D&R: Anda mengatakan sampai kini mereka masih trauma. Apa yang mereka lakukan, misalnya? IN: Saya pernah diundang oleh suatu komunitas di Jakarta Barat. Mereka ini membawa pisau ke mana-mana, bahkan ke kamar mandi sekalipun. Umumnya pisau tak pernah lepas dari tangannya.***
[Mingguan D&R, no.46, Th.XXIX, 4 Juli 1998]
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