THE RAPES IN THE SERIES OF RIOTS:The Climax of an Uncivilized Act of the Nation Life
This is not a made up story, but a true story. It is only one of hundreds of rapes that happened during the riots on May, 1998. The vastness of the rape, according to the reports filed until today, are shown in various tables and testimonies in this very "Document". After the riot then came out some statements that denied the fact of the rape. Well, it is better to silence the statements. The answer is clear already: the rapes did happen. And this happened to not only one or two, but to many women and girls.
Probably some government officials likely to hold their old play: try going to cover the case up as if it never happened since there is no report at all on the savage rape during the riots. It is an easy thing to explain: First of all, in this country, "having been raped" is a condition which is considered shameful or even a defect. That is why for sure the victims and their families try not to reveal what happened to them. Second, since the physical and psychological suffering is very unbearable, the victims and the witnesses can only tell, although with difficulties, to the persons whom they trust. The fact that there is no report at all made to the government shows that until now the government has not yet been considered trustworthy by the people with such a problem. Third, to many rape cases during the riots, the rapists also took the victims� KTP (The Identity Card). And this decreased the possibility of the victims to complain and make reports. They have been silenced by their feelings of "disgrace", by terror or threat. Lastly,, the members of the Volunteers Team for Humanity ("Tim Relawan"), who have been often contacted by the victims and the witnesses, many times get warnings not to continue their activities of "listening" and "helping" the victims. In this very country, even in the (supposed-to-be) reformation spirit, speaking about and listening sympathetically to the victims of the rapes is still considered a threat (to the state-nation? or to some official elements?). Even in the (supposed-to-be) reformation condition, seeking the truth has been accused of being a subversive activity. So we do not need to question why the international community halfheartedly counts on Indonesia, as if they are watching a group of barbaric creatures. Please do not ask why the investments from abroad have not yet come to Indonesia. From the "absence" of the reports of the rapes to the government, we cannot conclude that the rape itself never happened. This "Early Documentation No. 3" precisely shows how vast the rapes mere during the riots. A single act of raping has been enough to be considered inhuman. Hundreds of rapes with similar brutal modus operandi were absolutely "systematic and organized massive uncivilized acts". The modus operandi were very similar to the ones that stimulated the riots on the middle May 1998. (Vide "The Early Documentation No.1 & 2). Rapes: A Total Destruction of The Community In the series of the systemic and organized rapes, as a nation we are facing the following phenomena:
For many eyewitnesses, the border between "seeing" and "experiencing" is obscured, and so is the difference between "self" and "victim". "After seeing accidentally a Chinese girl raped by many people, my young sister is so frightened and stressed. Her talking is disordered and her body is trembling every time someone comes near her. For two weeks she was in the hospital. I become doubtful if my sister only saw someone raped or she herself were also raped. Why her reaction is like that?" (A complaint of a girl�s sibling, June 1998).The phenomenon shows how the effect of the rapes has been so far destructive to the inner life and daily life of so many people. This is a total destruction of our living together. So the events have been internalized by some groups of people with the imagination that is most sadistic and inhuman:
That is an example of the destruction of the imagination on our living together. The Extent of The Rapes The extent of the rapes during the riots May, 1998, was not the result of fantasies. In this "Documentation", the place and the moment of the rapes can be recognized. The number of the victims will be mentioned as far as the data filed until the day this "Documentation" is written down. The similar patterns in the modus operandi of the rapes also gave a strong indication that the events have involved the network of planning, the think tanks and actors which are systematic and well organized. Below are the data of the rapes. Under terror and with hard work are, data and information below were filed from the victims themselves and from the eyewitnesses, and not from the rumors or from the newspapers. With the respect and for the confidentiality demanded by the victims and the eyewitnesses (Cf. Ethic Code for Protection), their names and identities are not mentioned. 1. Locations of the Rapes Table 1 shows the extent of the places where the rapes and the sexual abuses took place in Jakarta and the surroundings. Note the pattern. If the riot, the massive destruction and burning in May 1998 happened in all areas of Jakarta, the rapes only happened in West Jakarta, North Jakarta, and the other areas where the Chinese are concentrated to live and to work. We intentionally show this pattern so that we may note it. Table 1 Comparation Locations of The Massive Destruction-and-the Burning Down And The Locations of The rapes-and-the Sexual Abuse
Source: The Documentation of "Volunteers Team For Humanity" (Tim Relawan untuk Kemanusiaan), the witness of the victims and the witnesses. In a shorter description, the concentration of the areas where the rapes and the sexual abuse happened appears in the following picture. It is clear that the rapes and the sexual abuse were concentrated in West Jakarta, North Jakarta, and other locations around Jakarta. Locations of the Rape in the Range of the Riots Notes: *The whole picture: The extent of the areas of the riot * Grey shadings: The extent of the range of the rapes and of the sexual abuse. What to conclude from the pattern of the areas of the rape above? First, the rapes and the sexual abuse happened in the areas of the riots where destruction, burning, and massive deaths happened (Vide "The Early Documentation No. 1 & 2). Second, the pattern clearly shows that the rapes and sexual abuses were directed to the Chinese. This phenomenon can be identified with the identity of the victims filed by "the Volunteers Team" even until today. 2. The Modus Operandi of The Rapes As mentioned above, the rapes and riots happened at the same time. The patterns of the rapes were very similar to the modus operandi used in the riot. The similarity suggests that there must be a relationship between the two tragedies.
The characteristic of the rapes could be found in so many rapes and sexual abuse. One of them reads below:
As we mentioned at "Preparatory Document No. 2", the actors of the incident came from unknown places. They are different from the native residents. In some cases, victims could be saved from the rapes by local residents:
Below are the examples of the rapes and mass sexual abuse: what they did, and the indication of the ones who did. Table 3 The examples Modus Operandi of the Sexual Abuses and the rapes on May 13-15 1998
Source: Documentation of the Volunteers Team for Humanity. The stories came from the victims, their families, and eyewitnesses of May 13-15, 1998 tragedy.
The wide range of mass raping can be proven by the numbers of victims, relatives, friends, and witness as who told the stories secretly and sadly. From the very confidential report, we could collect the numbers of rape victim and sexual abuses. All of them are shown at Table 4. Among the victims, 20 died. The other ones physically and psychologically now are in very bad condition. Till July 3, 1998, there are 168 persons who told that they got mass raping and sexual abuse (152 persons are from Jakarta and its environs, 16 persons from Solo, Medan, Palembang, and Surabaya). The numbers as we see at Table 4 are not the total numbers of the victims. Those are ones who had reported the incident until July 3, 1998. Table 4 The Numbers of Rape and Sexual Abuse Victims at Jakarta and its environs 1)
Source : Documentation of The volunteer Team for Humanity, May 13 - July 3, 1998
The statistics above are numbers mainly and do not record the threats, terror, persecution, sadness, tears, fear and loneliness of the victims. For the victims, the families and the witnesses unbearable memories remain. When many volunteers started helping by paying attention and listening to the victims, they were terrorized and threatened. How can justice and the truth be found in this country? 4. Terror to Fact Finding Since the victims got sympathy, funds, and volunteers who want to listen to them, the terror and intimidation happened to them, to their relatives, to the Chinese, to the hospital staff and the doctors who treated them, also to the volunteers. The characteristics of terror and intimidation are shown on Table 5 below: Table 5 Category and Target of Terror to the effort of searching and reporting raping victims and sexual abuse
Source : Documentation of Volunteers Team for Humanity. The stories come from the victims, their families, doctors and hospital staff, eyewitnesses, common people, and members of the Volunteers Team for Humanity.It is very clear that the target of the terror and threats are the ones who tried to find the truth. It proves how "the total damage of our living together" real. It shows that the hand over of power on May 21, 1998 was only a "forced drama" that performed on our political life. Deep inside the political turbulence we can find an old style of terrors and threat: violence, systematic, full of force, using racketeers and gangsters, military, hired assassin.
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Facing all the terrors and threats, there is one movement happening among the people. Since all of the riots and the rape, there are more and more people feel that they should investigate and find the network of the architects and actors of the riot and the rapes. These people come from many backgrounds: religion, age groups, ethnic, social status. They have one goal, the disclosure of the architects and actors of the riots and the rapes. This network is a "public crime" and the architects and the actors are "public criminals". Also there are more people who do not only feel, but also give anything they can give for these humanity efforts. We can conclude this movement as an aspiration and striving of so many people in the society for justice and the truth. GREAT URGENCY OF HELP AND REVELATION After considering the rapes and sexual abuse as described above, now where are we to go? What steps can we take? This question is without any official statement quality, though, but with great urgency. There are some directions we can take: 1. Optimum Help to the Victims More than just any political intrigue, we are facing hundreds of the rapes and sexual abuse victims. As described above, nowadays the victims are absolutely in poor condition: physical and genital organs damaged, very bad physical pain, psychoneurosis, temptation to commit suicide, living in fear and desperation. One thing we can do for them is to have an: I-do-care-attitude, i.e. emphatic and efforts to enhance their hope for the future. The government and civilians must wholeheartedly help the people and help them with people they ran trust. To do this, let us consider the following: 2. Collaboration to Stop the Terror and the Threat The victims, their families, the eyewitnesses, hospital personnel and doctors, the volunteers have been terrorized. Just take a look at the fear:
we have lost face in this "Republic of Terror and Fear" (Republik Teror dan Ketakutan). And this kind of republic has no sense of security. The security forces should be helping and can help a great deal. They should not be blaming civilians or the international community for believing that they the security forces, have "chickened out" in helping, been in agreement with or actually been part of the terror and threat. Surely the security forces have power and yet these. Incidents continue even up to now. (July 3) Whether the security body will help or not, we are the civilians will continue to elaborate our effort to protect each other in helping the victims. To all businessmen and managers, all white collar and laborers, doctors and nurses, intellectuals and activists, this very effort is a real step to our longings for what we call the civil society. The heart of the civil society is civility. So the uncivilized, systematic, and organized rapes is absolutely a negation and a total destruction of civility, the very heart of the civil society. 3. The Death and The Resurrection of Living Together The blurring between "civilized" and "uncivilized", good and evil so quickly penetrate our daily lives:
What can we do to make up "the total destruction of our living together"? While we help the victims and efforts to stop the terror, one thing we can do together is to uncover the network of think tanks and actors for the rape and sexual abuse. 4. Contra "Scapegoat" Argument The revelation of the network for the rapes and sexual abuse becomes the key to the renovation of our living together precisely because in the systematic and organized network lies the destruction of our lives. Perhaps we may argue about the roots of the tragedy and cleverly propose to solve the roots. For instant, people think that the root of all the uncivilized acts is poverty. This kind of argument has at least three weakness. First, if poverty is the root, all societies that have been living in this condition must experience a long, long tragedy of rape (let�s say: Germany, Nigeria, Turky, India, Japan, Philippine, or Peru), since those societies also have groups of people living in poverty like Indonesia. The fact that those societies have no tragedy of rape, as Indonesia does, shows that there is no causal relationship between "poverty" and "rape". If poverty is the root of the phenomenon, even on a large scale, second, the in silentio argument puts the poor as the only participants the rape and sexual abuse. It is not only absurd, but also has moral superiority arrogance of those who are not-poor towards to poor. What this very argument will show is a certain ideology that the poor are the only scapegoat. On the contrary, the fact shows that many victims (or victims-to-be) were saved by civilians, most of them of the poor. Last, the argument that "poverty is the root of the phenomenon" is also an escapist argument: looking for other distantly related reasons. Perhaps this kind of argument sounds logical on a TV debate show or in a seminar forum, in viewing the urgency of the tragedy. Now, those contra-arguments do not say that "poverty" is a great problem in this country. It is! But putting poverty as the only reason of the tragedy is escapism. It is more urgent than a debate of how poverty relates to the tragedy that we are to uncover the network of the think tanks and actors of the systemic tragedy. 5. A Sketch of the Direct Relationship between the Riots and the Rapes The modus operandi as shown in the Table 3, the network of the think tanks and actors of the rapes cannot be separated from the ones of the riots on May 1998. The demolition, the burning down, and the rape are different elements of the same systemic and organized acts. A further step, a revelation of the network of the think tanks and actors of the rape will lead us to uncover the ones of the riots and vice versa. The inseparable relationship between the think tanks and actors of both the riots and the rape is not a made-up story, and so is the term "the network of the think tanks" not. The facts of the systemic and organized plan and operation leads us to the conclusion.
This systemic and organized plan has already been the attitude of some groups in our society:
Or,
Or else,
Again, after the riots of May 1998, the collective attitudes are just like the ones before and after the riots among some people.
After considering the network of "the plan and the think tanks" let us discuss about the network of "the operation and the actors". Again, Table 3 has shown both of the networks. One pattern that distinguished them is that the rape and sexual abuse clearly pointed to Chinese women of the Chinese housings and business area. (Vide the Table 1 and the Diagram). This specific selection of the area and target proves that there must be a systemic and organized network of plan and operation behind it. 6. An Urgent Revelation: Facts The plan and the modus operandi of the riot and the rapes unquestionably involved the systemic and organized networks. Just like the riot that was not by accident, so was the rapes. Table 6 below will show the parallel of the inseparable patterns of both of the networks Table 6 Modus Operandi Comparison between the Riot and rape Rapes
Source : "Volunteers Team for Humanity" documentation, from the testimonies of the victims, their family and friends, and also from the eyewitnesses, May-June 1998.Table 6 shows clearly how any accidental-factor-theory by no means can explain the fact of the riot and the rapes, (Cfr. "Early Documentation No. 1 and No. 2). If both the riots and the rapes were merely by accident,
Those 4 questions are central to our point of view. Every single statement that says that all those tragedies were merely by accident has no evidence nor logic at all. The causality of the rapes and the riot is the result of the network of organized, systemic, and patterned plan and operation. So it involves the think tanks and the actors of the network. Now, the next step is the revelation. These aspirations and demands are from many groups of our society: businessmen-women, international community, farmers, labors and white-collars, intellectuals and activists, public servants and the poor, children and students. 7. The Focus of the Revelation: The Network of the Think tanks and Actors The patterns and the evidence are clear. Now, there is an unbearable question to answer: what to do with the net work of he think tanks and actors of the rapes (and the riot)? Just forget and shelve it? Or, together we have to uncover it? To forget it means to shelve it. No difference. But how can we forget such thing if the tragedy already has been an unforgettable gray episode in the life of the victims, their families and relatives, the eyewitnesses and all of us? How can we forget such thing if it already has been a nightmare: part of the fear and trauma, of the depression and loneliness and desperation, and even part of the most inhuman fantasy of some of us? All those phenomenon already are data (happened) and facta (done). Our personal and communal lives are not only based on high salaries or GNP figures, but also on memories, whatever the memories contain. For now, then, we are living in a nightmare of the rapes and the destruction. First of all, we have testimony that the rapes and the massive destruction did happen. Second, we testimony that hundreds of the victims of the tragedies are part of the uneraseable gray episode of the political history and of our way of living together in this very country. Lastly, we also have testimony that the tragedies have already blurred (even have destroyed) the difference between the "good" and the "no-good" things, "civilized" and "uncivilized" in our society . And this is an undeniable sign of a total destruction of the life of this very nation. It is clear that forgetting and shelving these brutal tragedies is not more than merely an escapism. It is just like using anesthetics. After the anesthetizing effect has gone, other brutal tragedies will follow one after another. Then we are living through these chains of brutality. There will be bloodshed, and other victims will be lining up. That is why we and all people of goodwill are demanding that the network of the think tanks and actors of the rapes and the destruction be uncovered. Every single politician, or party, or group, or political process that does not adapt this urgent agenda for humanity is not more than a power broker that has no ear to the wide range aspirations of the civilians. It is not only in the name of "justice", but the revelation also becomes a key step to reforming the difference between "good" and "evil", "civilized" and "uncivilized", in our living together. But literally we are to say that there is no public crime without any public criminal. Now, the investigation especially must be directed to:
A systemic and organized "public crime" only can be coped with by a systemic and organized "public anti-crime". So the investigation only can work if there is a network of all: the victims and the eyewitnesses, any civilian and the leaders of the government body, groups of religious men and women from any religion, groups of volunteers for humanity, experts and common people, labors and students, groups of any association and government elements. To those who are in the government body, all of you have special interest in the tragedies, precisely because you consider yourselves the managers for our life in this nation-state. Especially to the leaders of the armed forces, all of you have special interest in the tragedies, because you consider yourselves the managers for the security of our life in this nation-state. All of you can contribute significant help to the investigation. We do know that all of you smartly and strictly keep an eye on, investigate, and spy on anything and anybody: from the lives of the laborers to the vendors�, the student activities to the retired generals�, from the discussion-groups to the activists for humanity�s, from the published books to any meeting. For decades you are expert in these. There is no activity in the society that can escape your monitors. And it has been an enduring pattern: complicated bureaucracies, the arrest of those whom you dislike. If your expertise in these matters and alike has been proven so far, then, you should easily recognize and find the network of the think tanks and actors of the rapes and the destruction on May 1998. Well, perhaps some of you cannot see the plank in your eyes. But for sure this is not true for thousands of you who are in charge of the security of this very nation and state. Many of you must know exactly the network. This "Documentation" is not only out of our deep concerns, but also we hope that this one will be useful to all of you. It is clear that the pattern, the operation, and the modus operandi of the tragedies are systemic and organized and involve many planners and actors, as you can read in this "Documentation". (Vide Early Documentation No. 1 & 2). Please feel free to use all the documents, while groups in the society are doing our best in helping the victims. You know that there are more and more people wait to see your significant help in uncovering the network of the rapes and the massive destruction. If not, please do not blame us that there are more and more people believe that many "government" and "security" elements are useless. Or, perhaps they still work but they agree to or even have involvement the tragedies. Epilogue
To all civilians, the government, the armed forces, and to the children of
the future generation of our history, we are handing the "Documentation" in; in
order to re-learn about the differences between what�s "civilized" and
"uncivilized"; in order that our children and grand children re-learn the
differences between what "good" and "no-good" are for our life together. Jakarta, July 13th, 1998 Volunteers team for Humanity I. Sandyawan Sumardi, SJ Secretary Notes:
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