May riot rape victims scared into silence: UN
May riot rape victims scared into silence: UN
GENEVA (AFP): Chinese-Indonesian women raped during last year's disturbances in Indonesia have been threatened in order to shut them up, a United Nations investigator reported Wednesday.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, special rapporteur to the UN human rights commission, said she was convinced despite police denials that there were mass rapes including gang rapes during the riots.
The army had only rarely intervened against violence towards the Chinese minority, she said.
None of the victims of sexual assault including 52 rape cases, with whom the special rapporteur spoke during an investigation in Indonesia, had filed charges, she said in her report on violence against women submitted Wednesday to the UN human rights panel's annual session here.
The victims had received death threats and anonymous letters warning them against filing charges. They had also received photographs of their own rapes, accompanied by a warning that the pictures would be widely distributed if the women dared to speak up, Coomaraswamy added.
She called on the authorities at the highest level in Indonesia to introduce a witness protection program, and have those who had allegedly issued the threats brought to book.
"Otherwise the legitimate process of politics and governance will always be subverted by shadowy forces who rule civil society through the use of terror," Coomaraswamy insisted.
She described how certain officials in Indonesia had made light of the threatening letters even although 17-year-old Ita Martadinata, daughter of a women's rights activist, had been murdered at her Jakarta home after receiving death threats and anonymous letters.
The rapporteur said she had been unable to establish exactly how many women had been raped during the violence in Indonesia which culminated in the resignation of president Suharto.
"The Chinese community appears to be terrorized by the events," she added.
According to the non-governmental organization Volunteers for Humanitarian Causes, 1,190 were killed in Jakarta and 168 women were the victims of gang rapes.
The government-appointed Joint Fact-finding Team reported last November that 76 were sexually assaulted, most of them Chinese- Indonesians.