Appointed secretary of the fact-finding team in July, she now says, following the publication of its report last week, that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the rapes were organised.
That intuitive instinct to blame the military translates less well into proof. Up till now, there has been no evidence directly implicating the military, or everyone's favourite rogue general, the sacked Lieutenant-General Prabowo Subianto, in the mass rapes.
What has emerged so far is a hotch-potch of innuendo and isolated, second-hand accounts. Father Sandyawan Sumardi, the Catholic priest who first brought global attention to bear on Indonesia with detailed reports on the May riots, and who continues to press for a full accounting by the government, is said to have in his custody a couple of young men who claimed they were trained at a military base to wreak havoc during the riots.
Drugged, bruised and bleeding, they ran literally into the priest's arms in the chaotic aftermath of the riots as they fled separately from their alleged trainers, activists close to him said.
Another activist, who lost a wife and two daughters when rioters looted and burnt his shophouse, says he met an Islamic kyai (religious scholar) who told of hearing a confession from a contrite Kopassus special forces soldier who said he had commanded a unit which instigated the looting orgy in Lippo Karawachi mall in west Jakarta.
The soldier, remorseful after discovering that seven members of his own family had died in burning malls elsewhere, claimed he knew of two other units, comprising gangsters imported from eastern Indonesia and assorted military school drop-outs, whose jobs were to "burn and rape" in his area.
The activist says he has no reason to doubt the kyai's sincerity. They were both mourning loved ones at the mass graves for victims of the riots in mid-August, the 100th day after the riots, when the kyai poured out his woes. "I told him that if he did not tell the press and the fact-finding commission about the Kopassus man, he would have to pay for his sins in hell." The kyai subsequently testified before the commission. When a local magazine Tajuk published a detailed account, the military threatened to sue.
Fact-finding team chairman Marzuki Darusman, asked about the veracity of the kyai's account and that of the two "drugged" youths, says they were among the mass of data his team considered worthy of verification. The final report makes no reference to these events. But one ethnic Chinese volunteer is impressed that team members are even prepared to listen. "We Chinese think that if the Indonesians believe these stories, then the riots must have been something awful even for them."
You are not wanted here
Whether there were only 85 verifiable cases of rape and sexual assault, and not 168 as first claimed by human rights advocates, the message for Indonesia's Chinese community is crystal clear: "You are not wanted here." The anti-Chinese dimension "really comes out in the rapes", says Mr Marzuki, speaking in his personal capacity before his team finished its three-month probe last month. "Once you establish the scale of the rapes and a pattern emerges, it is not difficult to conclude that systematic terror was intended to leave an impact on the Chinese community to make them leave or put them on notice."
And tens of thousands of ethnic Chinese have left, for Singapore, Australia, Hongkong and elsewhere. For them, the rapes were the last straw. "Our pride is hurt," says Indonesian Chinese business leader Sofyan Wanandi. "It is something insulting to us. The trauma is such that families will keep quiet and just leave."
In the weeks following the first revelations, he has had to relocate five of his managers abroad to placate their frightened wives; more remain on waiting lists. His own wife, he admits, has been pressuring him to leave, too. "We're not an open society. Some fathers will rather kill their daughters than tell people they've been raped. We can almost accept them killing us. But rapes... It is most sensitive. We can't accept it." Still, "enough is enough". Anger has accompanied fear. "It is time to fight back," he declares.
The top 10 per cent of the Indonesian Chinese community might be able to leave. But 90 per cent of them have neither the skills nor the capital to resettle elsewhere. It is for this 90 per cent "who can't go" that community leaders must begin examining how they can convince society at large that the Chinese here are also Indonesians.
Among the options: joining forces with Muslim political parties to convince their grassroots that the Chinese can "change their attitude", that they are prepared and willing to integrate. This strategy should also "neutralise politicians" who might otherwise pick on the Chinese as scapegoats to whip up support or deflect anger away from themselves, he reckons, careful at the same time to stress his belief that it is only a "small minority" who want to force the Chinese out.
But whether this small minority is a military unit headed by Lt-Gen Prabowo, as the fact-finding team contends, or not, they certainly used to devastating effect the anti-Chinese sentiment that is so deep-seated among Jakarta's urban poor that many allowed themselves to be mobilised to terrorise the Chinese in their midst, to steal and destroy their properties even as others in the community gave them sanctuary.
The only question here is whether they also raped Chinese women as a primal act of conquest. Did a number of individuals spontaneously, and independently in their own corners of Jakarta, decide that they should act out their hatred of ethnic Chinese by raping the womenfolk, to contaminate the bloodline, so to speak? Or were those paid to start the riots also given licence to rape and harass women as an added incentive, much like Moroccan soldiers fighting with Free French forces in Italy in 1943 were offered mercenary terms, which included licence to rape and plunder in enemy territory.
Sociologist Julia Suryakusuma, who specialises in the study of sexuality, notes that "historically, rape is commonly used as an integral part of humiliating and demoralising the enemy in war situations. The rape of a nation's women signifies the rape of the nation's dignity".
Mass rapes have been documented in Bosnia, Cambodia, Liberia, Peru, Somalia and Uganda. Further back in history, there was the Rape of Nanjing in 1937 by Japanese forces and their enslavement of "comfort women" throughout the countries they conquered. But Indonesia is not currently in a state of war, she points out, making the mass rapes in May "particularly galling and horrific".
Whatever answers history later provides, the May violence has also led many middle-class Chinese Indonesians to ask a more personal question: Who are we, we non-Chinese-speaking people who long ago gave up our Chinese names and customs to merge better into society at large?
Old grudges coming to light
Television personality Anton Indracaya is determined to give his three children opportunities to learn Chinese, the mother tongue he does not understand. "I'm ashamed. I speak better French, German, Italian than Chinese." The British-trained PhD in psychology is also the public relations manager for Indonesia's acclaimed national badminton team, whose key players are ethnic Chinese.
He recalls being in Hongkong for the Thomas Cup a week after the riots. Olympic champion Susi Susanti, who is Indonesian Chinese, had just lost her final match. Walking back to his hotel in tears as he wondered how his fellow citizens back home would react to the loss, he suddenly thought: "We're fighting for Indonesia abroad. But back home in Indonesia, we're afraid for our lives."
Although determined to stay on in Indonesia – "I can't choose where to live. I'm not Sofyan Wanandi" – he will no longer demand of his children, now aged three, 12 and 18 years old, that they live in Indonesia too when they grow up. "It's just not fair on them," he says, remembering the nine rape victims he has seen, one a nine-year-old.
Along with a number of middle-class Chinese Indonesians, he now spends much of his time trying to help fellow Chinese victims of the May riots, many of whom were already struggling to eke out a decent living when their homes and businesses were destroyed.
Although a militant tone sometimes enters into their discussions on the institutional discrimination they face, these ethnic Chinese volunteers prefer to keep a low profile, leaving the shouting to their better-established indigenous counterparts. "Our objective is to help victims, not publicise numbers," says one Chinese woman, who gave up a career to work full-time with a rescue group. But she also senses "a spirit of unity" now that did not previously exist among Jakarta's disparate Chinese communities, separated as they are by socio-economic class, place of residence and ancestral origins.
"We need to use the opportunity," she says. Opportunity to reach out to the larger community to accept them and to press for better protection for and the removal of discriminatory policies against themselves.
The largely indigenous-run non-government groups (NGOs) are certainly using the adverse global publicity generated by the May riots and mass rapes to press for much-needed political and social changes. Whatever their original impetus – women's rights, labour rights, press freedom, Islamic resurgence, clean government, Aceh, East Timor, Irian Jaya – the NGOs tend to agree on one issue: It is time ABRI got out of politics.
If the May atrocities can be pinned decisively on ABRI – regardless of whether a small coterie of generals or an entire unit is implicated – then perhaps the powerful institution can be shamed and pressured into relinquishing its stranglehold on Indonesian politics so much more readily in the hope of achieving national reconciliation.
As it is, widespread belief in its culpability for the May riots does not even need the imprimatur of the official fact-finding commission to translate into conviction that ABRI is responsible for all the abuses thousands of Indonesians from Aceh to Irian Jaya have suffered for close to three decades. Nor will it quench the thirst for retribution and compensation.
As Mr Marzuki puts it, the "resentment of 25 years" is now coming to the surface. "Old issues are coming out with the euphoria of freedom. People are finding ways to express their grievances." The only snag so far: "We're not used to resolving matters decisively or definitively. We always do things half way, glossing over or sweeping under the carpet. Eventually the past catches up with us again. There must be a way of discontinuing past practices," he says.
It now remains to be seen whether his fact-finding report will succeed in prodding ABRI and the current political leadership to find the courage and the imagination to meet the demands of justice.