Documentary films on rape screened

JAKARTA (JP): A rare documentary revealing mass rapes of German women toward the end of World War II will be screened on Friday and Saturday at the Goethe-Institute, Jl. Matraman 23, Central Jakarta, to mark the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.

In Befreier und Befreite (Liberators and Liberties), German film director Helke Sender has tried to reveal the truth behind rapes which happened 50 years ago by interviewing the victims.

A German activist, Gaby Mischkowski, who helps sexually assaulted women in Bosnia, said, "This documentary is the first to be publicly screened on the rapes of German women."

"It's amazing that for about 50 years, those women said nothing about what happened to them," she said, adding that over one million German women, including 100,000 women in Berlin alone, were sexually assaulted at that time.

Gaby is here representing Sander and Barbara Johr, writers of the 1992 documentary, which took 10 years to research and was screened for the first time at the Berlin Film Festival in 1992.

Sita Aripurnami of Kalyanamitra, a human rights group, said the film would make people understand why rape victims are reluctant to talk about their experiences.

The first 94-minute part of the film will be screened on Friday, Nov. 6, and the second part, 116 minutes, on Saturday. A discussion featuring Gaby Mischkowski and human rights activists Karlina Leksono, Ita F. Nadia and Sita Aripurnami, will be held after the Saturday screening. (ste)