Mass rape

It was reported that the National Commission on Human Rights has proposed the establishment of a "truth and reconciliation commission to look into the Tanjung Priok riot..." (The Jakarta Post, June 20). While any effort to correct past injustices should be commended, in this case it only serves to highlight the absolute failure of the commission to take any meaningful action on behalf of the victims of rape and other forms of sexual abuse which occurred during the riots of May 12-15.

Why the inaction? How is it possible that in the midst of the reform fever which is sweeping the nation that possibly hundreds of victims of brutal racially motivated rape are forced to cower in their homes while their assailants are still free? Any talk of human rights and democracy is nothing but sheer hypocrisy as long as the gross injustices suffered by these women goes uncorrected.

Many have advanced the argument of "economic disparity" to explain the targeting of the ethnic Chinese. Clearly the victims of the riots were not conglomerates. In general, they were middle class shopkeepers and any woman of Chinese descent unfortunate enough to be out on the street at the time. Businessmen of all nationalities and ethnic backgrounds know that under the former regime, to do business was to inevitably be stained by collusion, corruption, and nepotism, but how many government officials who ran and profited from the system were targeted by rioters? How many of the women and girls including school age children inhumanly brutalized can be said to be responsible for the system which has discriminated against them since birth?

There is only one word to describe the motivation of the rioters in targeting the ethnic Chinese: racism. Suffering under an unjust system does not give license for injustices to be inflicted upon others because of the color of their skin and the slant of their eyes. Rioters were reported to have said that they were raping their victims because they were Chinese and non- Moslem and none were reported to have said it was because of economic disparity.

Mass rape was a weapon used in the former Yugoslavia as a weapon of "ethnic cleansing" by all sides. Here, fortunately the majority of the population doesn't have to worry about their home being broken into, their wives, daughters, mothers or girlfriends being gang raped before their eyes. But that shouldn't stop them from condemning this heinous crime and urging that the National Commission on Human Rights take immediate action to find those responsible for the rapes. Mass rape which is sensationalized, rationalized, belittled and finally forgotten makes a mockery of human rights and any organization which claims to struggle for its advancement.

JIWAY FRANCIS TUNG

Jakarta