Source APC Newsgroup: act.indonesia

Written by: tapol@gn.apc.org
Date: 08 Nov 1998 06:08:42
Subject: ST: Indonesia's long, hard road to the truth

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From: tapol@gn.apc.org (TAPOL)
Subject: ST: Indonesia's long, hard road to the truth

From Joyo:

Straits Times Nov 8 1998
Indonesia's long, hard road to the truth

Appointed secretary of the fact-finding team in July, she now says, following
the publication of its report last week, that there is not enough evidence to
conclude that the rapes were organised.

That intuitive instinct to blame the military translates less well into proof.
Up till now, there has been no evidence directly implicating the military, or
everyone's favourite rogue general, the sacked Lieutenant-General Prabowo
Subianto, in the mass rapes.

What has emerged so far is a hotch-potch of innuendo and isolated, second-hand
accounts. Father Sandyawan Sumardi, the Catholic priest who first brought global
attention to bear on Indonesia with detailed reports on the May riots, and who
continues to press for a full accounting by the government, is said to have in
his custody a couple of young men who claimed they were trained at a military
base to wreak havoc during the riots.

Drugged, bruised and bleeding, they ran literally into the priest's arms in
the chaotic aftermath of the riots as they fled separately from their alleged
trainers, activists close to him said.

Another activist, who lost a wife and two daughters when rioters looted and
burnt his shophouse, says he met an Islamic kyai (religious scholar) who told
of hearing a confession from a contrite Kopassus special forces soldier who
said he had commanded a unit which instigated the looting orgy in Lippo
Karawachi mall in west Jakarta.

The soldier, remorseful after discovering that seven members of his own family
had died in burning malls elsewhere, claimed he knew of two other units,
comprising gangsters imported from eastern Indonesia and assorted military
school drop-outs, whose jobs were to "burn and rape" in his area.

The activist says he has no reason to doubt the kyai's sincerity. They were
both mourning loved ones at the mass graves for victims of the riots in mid-
August, the 100th day after the riots, when the kyai poured out his woes.
"I told him that if he did not tell the press and the fact-finding commission
about the Kopassus man, he would have to pay for his sins in hell."

The kyai subsequently testified before the commission. When a local magazine
Tajuk published a detailed account, the military threatened to sue.

Fact-finding team chairman Marzuki Darusman, asked about the veracity of the
kyai's account and that of the two "drugged" youths, says they were among the
mass of data his team considered worthy of verification. The final report
makes no reference to these events. But one ethnic Chinese volunteer is
impressed that team members are even prepared to listen. "We Chinese think
that if the Indonesians believe these stories, then the riots must have been
something awful even for them."

YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE
WHETHER there were only 85 verifiable cases of rape and sexual assault, and
not 168 as first claimed by human rights advocates, the message for
Indonesia's Chinese community is crystal clear: "You are not wanted here."
The anti-Chinese dimension "really comes out in the rapes", says Mr Marzuki,
speaking in his personal capacity before his team finished its three-month
probe last month. "Once you establish the scale of the rapes and a pattern
emerges, it is not difficult to conclude that systematic terror was intended
to leave an impact on the Chinese community to make them leave or put them
on notice."

And tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese have left, for Singapore, Australia,
Hongkong and elsewhere. For them, the rapes were the last straw. "Our pride
is hurt," says Indonesian Chinese business leader Sofyan Wanandi. "It is
something insulting to us. The trauma is such that families will keep quiet
and just leave."

In the weeks following the first revelations, he has had to relocate five of
his managers abroad to placate their frightened wives; more remain on waiting
lists. His own wife, he admits, has been pressuring him to leave, too.
"We're not an open society. Some fathers will rather kill their daughters
than tell people they've been raped. We can almost accept them killing us.
But rapes ... It is most sensitive. We can't accept it."

Still, "enough is enough". Anger has accompanied fear. "It is time to fight
back," he declares.

The top 10 per cent of the Indonesian Chinese community might be able to
leave. But 90 per cent of them have neither the skills nor the capital to
resettle elsewhere. It is for this 90 per cent "who can't go" that community
leaders must begin examining how they can convince society at large that the
Chinese here are also Indonesians.

Among the options: joining forces with Muslim political parties to convince
their grassroots that the Chinese can "change their attitude", that they are
prepared and willing to integrate.

This strategy should also "neutralise politicians" who might otherwise pick on
the Chinese as scapegoats to whip up support or deflect anger away from
themselves, he reckons, careful at the same time to stress his belief that it
is only a "small minority" who want to force the Chinese out.

But whether this small minority is a military unit headed by Lt-Gen Prabowo,
as the fact-finding team contends, or not, they certainly used to devastating
effect the anti-Chinese sentiment that is so deep-seated among Jakarta's urban
poor that many allowed themselves to be mobilised to terrorise the Chinese in
their midst, to steal and destroy their properties even as others in the
community gave them sanctuary.

The only question here is whether they also raped Chinese women as a primal
act of conquest. Did a number of individuals spontaneously, and
independently in their own corners of Jakarta, decide that they should act
out their hatred of ethnic Chinese by raping the womenfolk, to contaminate
the bloodline, so to speak? Or were those paid to start the riots also given
licence to rape and harass women as an added incentive, much like Moroccan
soldiers fighting with Free French forces in Italy in 1943 were offered
mercenary terms, which included
licence to rape and plunder in enemy territory.

Sociologist Julia Suryakusuma, who specialises in the study of sexuality,
notes that "historically, rape is commonly used as an integral part of
humiliating and demoralising the enemy in war situations. The rape of a
nation's women signifies the rape of the nation's dignity".

Mass rapes have been documented in Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia
and Uganda. Further back in history, there was the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 by
Japanese forces and their enslavement of "comfort women" throughout the
countries they conquered.

But Indonesia is not currently in a state of war, she points out, making the
mass rapes in May "particularly galling and horrific".

Whatever answers history later provides, the May violence has also led many
middle-class Chinese Indonesians to ask a more personal question: Who are we,
we non-Chinese-speaking people who long ago gave up our Chinese names and
customs to merge better into society at large?

OLD GRUDGES COMING TO LIGHT
TELEVISION personality Anton Indracaya is determined to give his three
children opportunities to learn Chinese, the mother tongue he does not
understand. "I'm ashamed. I speak better French, German, Italian than
Chinese." The British-trained PhD in psychology is also the public relations
manager for Indonesia's acclaimed national badminton team, whose key players
are ethnic Chinese.

He recalls being in Hongkong for the Thomas Cup a week after the riots.
Olympic champion Susi Susanti, who is Indonesian Chinese, had just lost her
final match.

Walking back to his hotel in tears as he wondered how his fellow citizens back
home would react to the loss, he suddenly thought: "We're fighting for
Indonesia abroad. But back home in Indonesia, we're afraid for our lives."

Although determined to stay on in Indonesia -- "I can't choose where to live.
I'm not Sofyan Wanandi" -- he will no longer demand of his children, now aged
three, 12 and 18 years old, that they live in Indonesia too when they grow up.

"It's just not fair on them," he says, remembering the nine rape victims he
has seen, one a nine-year-old.

Along with a number of middle-class Chinese Indonesians, he now spends much of
his time trying to help fellow Chinese victims of the May riots, many of whom
were already struggling to eke out a decent living when their homes and
businesses were destroyed.

Although a militant tone sometimes enters into their discussions on the
institutional discrimination they face, these ethnic Chinese volunteers prefer
to keep a low profile, leaving the shouting to their better-established
indigenous counterparts. "Our objective is to help victims, not publicise
numbers," says one Chinese woman, who gave up a career to work full-time
with a rescue group. But she also senses "a spirit of unity" now that did
not previously exist among Jakarta's disparate Chinese communities,
separated as they are by socio-economic class, place of residence and
ancestral origins.

"We need to use the opportunity," she says. Opportunity to reach out to the
larger community to accept them and to press for better protection for and the
removal of discriminatory policies against themselves.

The largely indigenous-run non-government groups (NGOs) are certainly using
the adverse global publicity generated by the May riots and mass rapes to
press for much-needed political and social changes.

Whatever their original impetus -- women's rights, labour rights, press
freedom, Islamic resurgence, clean government, Aceh, East Timor, Irian Jaya --
the NGOs tend to agree on one issue: It is time Abri got out of politics.

If the May atrocities can be pinned decisively on Abri -- regardless of
whether a small coterie of generals or an entire unit is implicated -- then
perhaps the powerful institution can be shamed and pressured into
relinquishing its stranglehold on Indonesian politics so much more readily in
the hope of achieving national reconciliation.

As it is, widespread belief in its culpability for the May riots does not even
need the imprimatur of the official fact-finding commission to translate into
conviction that Abri is responsible for all the abuses thousands of
Indonesians from Aceh to Irian Jaya have suffered for close to three decades.
Nor will it quench the thirst for retribution and compensation.

As Mr Marzuki puts it, the "resentment of 25 years" is now coming to the
surface. "Old issues are coming out with the euphoria of freedom. People are
finding ways to express their grievances." The only snag so far: "We're not
used to resolving matters decisively or definitively. We always do things
half way, glossing over or sweeping under the carpet. Eventually the past
catches up with us again. There must be a way of discontinuing past
practices," he says.

It now remains to be seen whether his fact-finding report will succeed in
prodding Abri and the current political leadership to find the courage and the
imagination to meet the demands of justice.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
TAPOL, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign
111 Northwood Road, Thornton Heath,
Surrey CR7 8HW, UK
Phone: 0181 771-2904 Fax: 0181 653-0322
email: tapol@gn.apc.org
Campaigning to expose human rights violations in
Indonesia, East Timor, West Papua and Aceh

Join us to celebrate TAPOL's 25th anniversary on
20 October 1998. Contact us for ticket details.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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