Jakarta – An international rights body Tuesday called on the Indonesian government to stop trying to discredit reports of gang rapes of ethnic Chinese women during May riots here, saying they were scaring off potential witnesses.

"Instead they should work to create a climate where victims of sexual violence might be more willing to come forward," the New York-based Human Rights Watch said. It also called on the government of President B.J. Habibie, who has himself cast doubt on the reports, to invite the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women to visit Indonesia to explore the issue. Indonesian rights groups, in reports which have triggered angry anti-Indonesian demonstrations by ethnic Chinese from New York to Beijing, have said that some 168 women were raped, of which 20 had died, some at the hands of their attackers and some by suicide. "If it was difficult to persuade victims, their families and their doctors to come forward before, it is going to be almost impossible now," Human Rights Watch Asia director Sidney Jones said.

Rights Watch noted the top Indonesian military officials who had cast doubts on the reports had cited the fact that no one had reported the rapes to the local police, and that they could find no evidence. But it said ethnic Chinese women would be unlikely to go to the police given "a long history in Indonesia of police extortion of ethnic Chinese and widespread belief that security forces were involved in the May violence."

The report, released here Tuesday to coincide with the opening of the Third Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions, conceded however there "might be problems" with initial data collected. As a result the number of victims would probably drop, perhaps even substantially, below the figures initially reported.

But the key issue, it said, was "not numbers but how and why the violence occured and how it can be prevented in the future," though rights groups should exercise "more than usual caution" in ensuring the credibility of their sources.

The report, entitled "The damaging debate on rapes of ethnic Chinese women" said the women who had been raped on May 13 and 14 when mobs rampaged through the predominantly Chinese business section of Jakarta and other cities were now traumatized.

"Advocates say the women in question are traumatized by the rapes themselves and subsequent intimidation, and, in some cases, have fled the country," it said. And while witnesses to actual rapes may have been difficult to produce so far, it said, "witnesses to public stripping of women have not, and the degrading, humiliating, terrifying nature of this act and the fear it has engendered among these women and their families needs far more attention."

It also said those trying to document the rape cases had been "subjected to a barrage of threats and intimidation ranging from telephoned threats to their children to placement of a grenade outside the Jakarta Social Institute."

Within Indonesia, it said, the rape or no-rape issue had pitted "top military officers who challenge the validity of the rape accounts", against Indonesian rights advocates and leading members of the ethnic Chinese community, who claim the assaults on women were "widespread, systematic and organized."

"Human Rights Watch believes that the more the debate focuses on whether or not the rapes occured, the less likely it is that serious investigations will be pursued to establish the extent of, and the reasons behind, the attacks on ethnic Chinese," it concluded.