John Aglionby – Lisa's parents are amazed she is still alive. On June 18, a week after her ninth birthday, this Chinese-Indonesian girl who lives 20 miles outside the north Sumatran city of Medan chose to walk home from school rather than wait for her elder sister Martha.
She never made it. Less than 400 yards from her house a man on his motorbike stopped and offered her a lift. She accepted but the man named Yudi, drove straight passed her house without stopping. He took her instead to a nearby sugarcane field and raped her before taking her back to his hoouse 50 miles away.
There, with the knowledge of his wife and three children, he kept Lisa who is less than 4 ft and weighs only three and a half stone, incarcerated her for six days. "Lisa does not remember being raped again but she says Yudi drugged her seven times during that time and on each occasion she woke up in great pain," Lisa's mother Ekki, said, "We are convinced she was raped again and again."
Early on June 24, Yudi returned Lisa to her home. She spent the next 10 days in hospital. Even though she led the police to Yudi's house, she is afraid to go home and is staying with friends, along with her mother and two sisters.
Martha said Lisa's ordeal was not an isolated case. "Hundreds of Chinese women have been raped or assaulted around here since May and the rapes are still going on." Only a couple of days before, a 56-year old Chinese woman had been raped.
The sexual terrorism of the Chinese community in and around Indonesia's third largest city began in early May when riots broke out after several protests against the then President Suharto. While the lootings and burnings of Chinese properties stopped after a week, the rape of women of the minority that is hated and envied for its economic success has continued. Yet only five women have reported being raped or sexually assaulted.
Sabaruddin, the head of the Medan branch of the Indonesian Advocacy Association, said there were three reasons why more people had not come forward. "They are too shy because of the stigma; they don't know where to report because they don't trust the police and there are no women's support groups; and they are afraid of being terrorisewd again." Another reason why more people are not campaigning to end the atrocities is that, unlike in Jakarta where many women were raped and killed in riots in May, only one rape-linked death has been confirmed in Medan.
"She was a 17-year-old schoolgirl who was kidnapped in a taxi while going home with a friend," said a Chinese woman who asked to remain anonymous. "The friend managed to escape but this other girl was taken away." She was found unconcious a few days later, her body covered in Arabic graffiti and her vagina full of broken glass and nails. "She was so badly injured and so badly traumatised her mother asked the doctors to end her life," the woman said, adding that other women had probably died but their fates would never be known.
"Many of the Chinese here are Buddhist and they have to bury their dead the same day. This is more important for them than to keep the body and report the case to the police." "They are targetting rich and poor alike", said one of Martha's friends. "They just seem to hate us and want to keep us living in fear."
Four other Chinese women have moved into the same house as Ekki and her daughers. They rarely go out and never alone. The front door is locked and protected by metal grilles. Few Chinese women are seen on the streets.
The police have formed a team to investigate the rapes but no one in the Chinese community expects results. "Even though we knew where Yudi lived, we had to go to the police twice and pay them before they acted," said Yusuf Suci, a businessman friend of Lisa's family, who helped after the ordeal.
The attack on Medan's Chinese collunity eclipses even the events of 1965. The hundreds were killed in Medan during a countrywide purge of communists and, by association, Chinese, in the wake of a failed coup blamed on the Communist Party.
Chinese-owned shops and businesses are also attacked. In Galang, 25 miles from Medan, a mob attacked 42 shops owned by Chinese Indonesians, stealing and damaging goods. "The mob only left the clothes I was wearing," said Siau Lie, the own of an electronic goods shop.
On Saturday three chicken farms outside the city were attacked. All the hens were stolen and the buildings burned. Ong Akui, who owned one of them, said: "It seems that want to drive us away but we have nowhere to go. So was have to stay her and live in terror and poverty."