By Dewi Anggraeni

Ita Nadia, the chairwoman of Kalyanamitra, a non-government organisation in Indonesia specialising in helping women, is not usually squeamish.

She is used to hearing instances of ill-treatment of women. Yet, 10 days after the 12-16 May riots in Indonesian cities, she was completely unprepared for what she was to discover.

Her organisation, part of a volunteer group that offered assistance to political dissidents under former president Suharto, received reports from field workers, not just of looting and rioting in areas where ethnic Chinese lived but of brutal rapes as well.

'It was so blood curdlingly atrocious that it was hard to believe,' she said. Faced with these reports, many women were so stunned they went into temporary denial, something which Ita could not afford to do.

The stories only emerged early this month because the women had been too traumatised to talk about their horrific ordeals. And in a society where rapes carry lasting shame on the victims, it would have been almost impossible for these women to admit that it had actually happened to them.

On top of that, there was real fear of reprisals. They were not able to deny what had happened however, even if they wanted to. There was the physical evidence on their bodies, as well as numerous witnesses who had seen the crimes committed. The mental scars may never leave them.

Together with other women's aid workers, Sita Kayam and Rita Kalibonso, Ita interviewed the victims and witnesses. What they compiled, not without pain all around, has shocked ordinary Indonesians.

Only a handful of the country's publications have written about the events. Susanto Pudjomartono, editor-in-chief of the Jakarta Post, which ran stories about the rapes every day of last week, firmly believes that however shameful these stories are, they have to be exposed. 'As a nation it is imperative that we begin soul-searching. What has happened to us?

Why have we allowed such an extent of moral degradation to destroy us?'

During the May riots the media mostly reported stories about burning and looting of shops and houses owned by ethnic Chinese.

The aid workers learned that the ethnic Chinese women who had been gang-raped, sexually molested and mutilated, even murdered, ranged from 10 to 60 years of age. The instances were so horrific that Ita still has to suppress a sob and a shudder each time she speaks about them.

A ten year old girl returning from school discovered that the shop and house where her family lived and worked had been burned. As she went in search for her parents, she was seized by two men and raped in front of her neighbours.

A female student was abducted at a bus stop, taken to a swamp near the airport and pushed into a car. There was a green uniform in the car and she asked her abductors if they were officers. 'If you are police, you should save me,' she pleaded, to which she received a chilling reply,

'No, we have to give you a lesson. You are a woman and you are beautiful, and you are Chinese.' She was raped by all four of her abductors.

In the midst of the riot, a group of men stopped a city bus and forced out all the non-Chinese women. Then they chose the beautiful women among the Chinese and raped them inside the bus.

A female bank officer was seized from the back of a motorcycle in the middle of rioters and thrown to the ground by a group of men. The mob beat her boyfriend to a pulp. The young woman was so hysterical that she has no recollection of what happened after that. She only remembers that when she regained consciousness, her whole body, especially her legs, was

covered with cuts and bruises.

On another occasion, arsonists burst into the lower floors of a building and began to set fire to it. They then ran upstairs and found three sisters cowering in one of the rooms. They pushed the oldest sister into a corner and raped the younger sisters in front of her. When they had

finished they said to the oldest sister, 'We are finished and satisfied.

We don't want you because you're too old and ugly.' Thus saying they dragged her two sisters then pushed them to the burning ground floor, where they were burned to death. When her mother heard the news, she had a heart attack and died. The woman is now being treated in a psychiatric hospital.

What stunned Lala, a Sydney SBS Radio reporter so badly that her doctor gave her a prescription for tranquilisers, is a graphic account of an 18 year-old woman, who was herself gang-raped and saw her own sister brutally raped then stabbed to death.

Despite the horror shown privately by those in authorities, there seems little chance that the perpetrators of these crimes will be brought to justice. Jakarta City Police spokesman Lt Col E Aritonang, while expressing sympathy and encouraging victims to report such cases,

warned that it would not be easy for police to solve them. They need formal reports, which means that the victims will have to come forward.

[Dewi Anggraeni is the Australia correspondent for the Jakarta Post and Forum]