Still no closure on May 1998 atrocities against ethnic Chinese

By Rahayu Ratnaningsih

JAKARTA (JP): A year has passed since the controversial May 1998 riots that were believed to be connected with the most horrific degradation to human dignity, women in particular: the sadistic and systematic gang rapes against ethnic Chinese women. Much has been said and written about the incidents both by those who claimed to have witnessed and have personal contact with the victims and those who, for one reason or another, chose skepticism or even outright disbelief that such a gross violation of human rights could have ever been carried out by generally mild-mannered, God-fearing Indonesian men.

This article is to remind us of the unsolved case, the magnitude of which can't simply be enshrined as another dark historical monument in our country's checkered past, and the kind of treatment that needs to be administered to the victims whose lives bear the scars of those horrific days.

On the evening of May 18, 1999, radio Delta FM presented a short fiction reading authored by Seno Gumira Ajidarma about a woman named Clara who was gang raped in last May's riot. Clara's role was narrated by Ratna Riantiarno and the policeman who interrogated her by Adi Kurdi, both are prominent stage actors and members of Teater Koma.

The incredibly sad accounts were eerily played out by both actors and all senses were gripped right from start to finish. Clara woke from unconsciousness and found herself lying naked on the toll road with a blinding pain between her legs and her BMW still in flames. A middle-aged native Indonesian woman helped her and pleaded, "Please forgive our children for inflicting such a bestial deed on you just because they hate Chinese." She covered Clara's body with a sheet. Clara reached for her mobile phone only to find a message from her father, "Clara, if you manage to listen to this message, I hope you are currently in Sydney or Perth or at least Singapore where you'll be safe. Your sisters Monica and Shinta have been raped and thrown into a fire. Mom was also raped and she committed suicide by throwing herself into the fire."

The woman took Clara to the police to report what had happened to her. The policeman, in his "business-like" manner insisted that she clearly and meticulously tell him what happened after the thugs ripped off her panties. "How can I make a precise report about what has happened to you if you can't tell me what happened after your panties had been taken off," he retorted nonchalantly, with not even the slightest shred of empathy in his voice. "Do not easily make extraordinary claims like this without evidence, otherwise you could end up being arrested for slander," he warned her harshly.

Clara couldn't say much. She couldn't find the words with which to describe the pain and humiliation she was experiencing. She didn't think there were such words in spoken language. She knew some English only for business purposes. She was once told that the Chinese language was very rich and capable of depicting various subtle meanings but she didn't speak any Chinese at all. She only knew some Chinese numbers to denote monetary values.

She said weakly that she just wanted to go home, although she was probably clueless whether there was still a home to go back to or not. He told her to stay until the situation outside was under control.

Meanwhile, he carefully inspected her scantily covered body: her fair and smooth skin, her bare shoulders and calves. She was indeed beautiful, he thought. He might want to "taste" her himself. And she was rich too. Her car was a BMW. He hated rich people and he hated them even more if they were Chinese. He never came close to wealth even though he regularly blackmailed and deceived people.

His superior was irritable that day, "My goodness, that again!! We've been inundated by so many of such cases today. Keep her here, don't let her go. And more importantly, don't ever let the press get ahold of this."

The author who is the deputy chief editor of Jakarta-Jakarta magazine and presumably an indigenous Indonesian himself, expressed his feeling of disgust about Indonesian society's reaction, or its lack thereof, toward the strong allegation of the May rapes. He didn't expect people to cry over this, but he expected them to at least be appalled at what might have happened, in spite of the perceived lack of evidence.

Last year, his magazine was stormed with massive protests by a group claiming to be defender of Islam for reprinting a New York Times story of a raped ethnic Chinese woman called Vivian whose younger sister and aunt also had the same fate. The article contained elements this group deemed to discredit Islam and Indonesian Muslims in general. It was a lukewarm response, even cynical and defensive as is witnessed from such emotional protests, from Indonesians in general, high-ranking officials, certain prominent groups and public figures in particular, which prompted him to write this story.

The controversial official statement of the fact-finding team last year about a number of confirmed sexual assaults mainly against ethnic Chinese women seems lost in the wind and overlooked in favor of other equally pressing emergencies the country is facing. It hasn't been followed up, and there is no sign it will be in the near future. It is the same Waiting For Godot kind of fate -- a play written by British playwright Samuel Beckett -- that befalls many other unsolvable human rights violation cases in this country. A few women organizations, thankfully, still attempt to raise a voice to remind people of the ongoing rampant abuses and violence against women and children.

What really happened that dark, smoky and burning May, may or may not have been as hideous, depending from one's point of view, as the fictitious account told by Seno Gumira Ajidarma. The author didn't mean to infer that all policemen are like the policeman in the story. Neither should we generalize that Indonesian people are conscientiously blunt because for every racist, bigoted indigenous Indonesian we have seen time and again there are just as many who wholeheartedly condemn and use everything in their power to uncover and promote public awareness of this most shameful disgrace to our nation's reputation.

The story, however, provides a good account of what possibly happened or could have happened when or if rape victims reported their cases to the police. Something that the skeptical, defensive and cynical bunch who insist on evidence and the filing of official complaints to the authorities should ponder over.

Flat denial and hurtful, if groundless, accusations that this was engineered by certain sections of society to sustain an evil plot to tarnish Indonesia's image certainly doesn't help victims recuperate. We are not alone in this case; after 50 years there are still people who doubt or deny that the Holocaust ever happened. There were people who thought that Anne Frank's diary was a hoax to deceive the world. However, what people believe or don't believe to have happened back then becomes less important now that the bitter fact that we have hundreds or probably thousands of potentially irreparably injured souls that need to live with the indescribable pain and psychological torments for the rest of their lives. Any disaster that befalls the perpetrators would , perhaps, never be sufficient to heal the pain.

Nobody knows for sure where these "surviving" souls are and how they are doing. Many are probably too traumatized to live in the only home country they know. What has been done to help them cope with this hardship? If coping is really the right word since we know no language which can describe the damage that has been inflicted and what the aftermath would feel like. Who can help or has been helping these ruptured souls find meaning amid horrendous suffering to give them reasons worth living? There has been no published information about this at all after the controversy finally died down late last year.

The latest information on this issue other than groups of local volunteers organized by a number of Indonesian non- governmental organizations, has been a Singapore-based organization working with the victims which has arranged for them free permanent residential status and medical/psychiatric treatment. Are we going to just forget and forgive without a fight?

Victor Frankl, a renowned psychiatrist who survived the Nazi concentration camps, beautifully summarized this as, "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms -- to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

"And there are always choices to make. Every day and every hour offers the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determines whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threaten to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determine whether or not you would become the play thing of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity or become molded into the form of the typical inmate."

As a survivor of the most brutal and repulsive racial persecution in human history that had cost him the lives of his loved ones, Frankl was fond of quoting Nietzsche: "he who has a why to live can bear with almost any how." The truth is he himself has gracefully shown the world that man has a capacity to rise above his biological, psychological and sociological conditions, to grow beyond them, if only he has a reason to do it. For even those who have to shoulder the force of inescapable suffering, still have, in principle, a unique opportunity to turn a predicament into an achievement -- in other words, to turn personal tragedy into human triumph.

Frankl further promulgated that "the will to meaning", instead of "the will to pleasure" or "the will to power" as theorized by his predecessors, is the main factor that drives man to move on with life however painful, bitter and traumatic it has been. In other words, the quest to find meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man.

Victor Frankl's book Man's Search For Meaning and his revolutionary approach to psychotherapy known as "logotherapy" (logos is a Greek word which denotes "meaning") should be recommended for those who are working with May's gang rape victims or in other similar cases such as those experienced by Acehnese women.

The writer is director of the Satori Foundation, a center for the study and development of human excellence through training in mind programming and meditation techniques.