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."
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