Geneva – Chinese women raped during last year's disturbances in Indonesia have been threatened in order to shut them up, a United Nations investigator reported Wednesday.

Radhika Coomaraswamy, special reporter to the UN human rights commission, said she was convinced despite police denials that there were mass rapes including gang rapes during the riots.

The Indonesian army had only rarely intervened against violence towards the Chinese minority, she said.

None of the 85 victims of sexual assault including 52 rape cases, with whom the special reporter spoke during an investigation in Indonesia, had filed charges, she said in her report on violence against women submitted Wednesday to the UN human rights panel's annual session here.

The victims had received death threats and anonymous letters warning them against filing charges. They had also received photographs of their own rapes, accompanied by a warning that the pictures would be widely distributed if the women dared to speak up, Coomaraswamy added.

The reporter called on the authorities at the highest level in Indonesia to introduce a witness protection programme, and have those who had allegedly issued the threats brought to book.

"Otherwise the legitimate process of politics and governance will always be subverted by shadowy forces who rule civil society through the use of terror," Mrs Coomaraswamy insisted.

She described how certain officials in Indonesia had made light of the threatening letters even although 17-year-old Ita Martadinata Haryonu, daughter of a women's rights activist, had been brutally murdered at her home in Djakarta after receiving death threats and anonymous letters.

The reporter said she had been unable to establish exactly how many women had been raped during the violence in Indonesia which culminated in the resignation of President Suharto.

"The Chinese community appears to be terrorised by the events," she added. According to the non-governmental organisation Volunteers for Humanitarian Causes, 1,190 were killed in Djakarta and 168 women were the victims of gang rapes.