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Rape victim volunteers threatened

Source
Straits Times - September 15, 1998

Jakarta – Volunteers working with Indonesian victims of rape, especially those from the May riots, said they and their families are still being terrorised. Mr Sandyawan Sumardi and Ms Karlina Leksono-Supelli of the Volunteers for Humanity told The Jakarta Post that those targeted included gynaecologists.

Mr Sandyawan, a priest who runs the Jakarta Social Institute which works for the urban poor, said a doctor who had just testified before the government-sponsored Joint Fact-Finding Team (TGPF) received a call telling him to "stop meddling".

The caller told the doctor that "they" knew where his daughters' school was and that they would be raped unless he stopped testifying. "The doctor then said he had to give up, which we understood and respected," he told the Post.

Ms Karlina quoted one of the callers she spoke to as saying: "So you guys still want to continue. Aren't you afraid of being raped?" She said the terror began soon after the "breaking of the silence" on the rapes during the May riots.

In July, the Volunteers for Humanity reported to the National Commission on Human Rights that they had received 168 reports of rape, 152 of them in Jakarta and the rest in other cities including Surakarta and Surabaya, in Central and East Java respectively.

Ms Karlina cited several factors which she said were a major hindrance to the solving of the cases – "the gap between the demands for evidence", the condition of traumatised victims, as well as the continued terror and denials.

Only one victim appeared "courageously" in a closed session last month at a United Nations sub-commission with Ms Karlina and Mr Sandyawan. She did not return home because her family had been harassed, Ms Karlina told the Post. She explained that because rapes were difficult to prove, there had been efforts to silence victims and their families.

Officials have denied the rapes took place. The London-based Human Rights Watch last week called on the government to stop discrediting reports of the rape, saying it was scaring off potential witnesses. The TGPF is still investigating the May riots, including the reported rapes.

Ms Karlina said the terror against volunteers and families of rape victims reflected a "strong force" that wanted the cases to remain unsolved. "Society must show that it is able to fight such intimidation," she said.

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