Jakarta – An international rights group Monday called for better protection for a group probing the rapes of ethnic-Chinese in Indonesia following the murder of a teenage volunteer from the team. New York-based Human Rights Watch also called for a full investigation into the murder here Friday of 17-year-old Marthadinarta, known as Ita, a member of the Volunteers for Humanity.

Jakarta police said Sunday a young man who lived in the neighbourhood had confessed to the murder, saying that the victim had caught him while he was robbing her house. But Rights Watch said in a statement received here that the murder had "raised concerns among Indonesian human rights groups that it represents an escalation of a campaign to terrorize those investigating the case."

Rights Watch Asia director Sidney Jones said in the statement that the three most visible members of the Volunteers for Humanity, Father Sandyawan, Karlina Leksono and Ita Fathia Nadia had been "threatened repeatedly since the issue of the rapes first arose."

"Now there is a murder of a person closely linked to their work. At the very least the Indonesian government has an obligation to conduct fully transparent investigations," Jones said. She added that the investigation should be extended to cover not only the murder, but the intimination that has continued for the past three months, and called on government officials to stop commenting on the rapes until October 23.

That is the date set for a joint government-NGO fact finding team entrusted by the government in August to look into the May violence to make their findings public.

The Rights Watch statement said the forms of intimidation used against the Volunteers had included obscene telephone calls and threats against their children. The statement concluded that there appeared to be "many contradictory reports" about Ita's murder," including whether she too was raped before the killing, and called for a "full and impartial investigation, with the results reported back to the Indonesian public."