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.