Still no closure on May 1998 atrocities against ethnic Chinese
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.