A mob of angry men jumped the concrete barricades and swept onto the tollway leading into Jakarta, their numbers forcing the terrified drivers to stop.

In one car were two young ethnic Chinese girls. They were pulled screaming from the vehicle and partially stripped. Right there in front of the mob they were repeatedly raped, their suffering a gruesome spectator sport for the rampaging gang.

In other parts of the city similar Muslim gangs were forcing entry into the homes of ethnic Chinese, raping wives and daughters in front of husbands and children, looting furniture and valuables, then torching the homes.

Initially, the horrifying sexual attacks on ethnic Chinese women during the mass riots of May this year were hushed up. Those who sought to comfort the victims, or piece together details of the gruesome attacks, were threatened with violence themselves by anonymous callers.

Police said they had received no complaints, but women's groups said the victims were too terrified to come forward.

Now, according to a new report handed to the Indonesian Human Rights Commission, solid evidence has been collected detailing 168 rapes of women and children, and the consequent death of 20 victims, either killed by their assailants, burnt to death in their homes, or who later died of their injuries.

"For the Chinese if you are raped it is not just a deep social shame, it is a curse, you can no longer be seen as a human being," says Ester, who runs a hotline for National Solidarity, a group opposing ethnic discrimination. "I got a lot of calls from victims and relatives who were so scared they wouldn't even give their names, they would just hang up."

The new report, compiled by the Volunteers for Humanity, which first publicly raised the rape claims, said 152 women were raped around Jakarta and another 16 in provincial towns, between the May riots and the first week of July.

What is now emerging is a pattern of systematic rape against ethnic Chinese women and children, within a wider rampage against the ethnic Chinese community.

Indonesia's minority ethnic Chinese historically have been targets of violence during political upheavals, their control of much of the nation's economy making them easy targets for social envy.

"It is true that every time there are problems in Indonesia the Chinese are attacked, but public rape is very deviant behaviour. We have heard of mass killings before, but not mass rapes," Ester said.

It is also clear that the Muslim-dominated armed forces did nothing to protect the victims from the terrible wave of violence which swept Jakarta. And there is evidence that in the lead-up to the crisis, rage against the relatively wealthy Chinese was fanned by senior Soeharto Government officials and military leaders as a means of deflecting attention from the Government.

But the problem now is that the fear has not ended with the removal of President Soeharto and his replacement by President B.J. Habibie. Last week the Government announced the appointment of an all-female task force to investigate the rapes, which human rights activists said came far too late for most of the victims.

Recently, in Chinese-dominated residential districts, gangs have reportedly painted homes with coloured marks for future attacks: red being a sign to burn, black to kill the occupants and green to loot.

Across Jakarta the commercial districts are scarred by the fires and destruction of the May riots, and many of the shops continue to display sign "Pribumi Muslim", meaning they are Islamic natives of Indonesia, not Chinese. As the economy continues to deteriorate and mass unemployment and hunger grips Indonesia few doubt there will be more violence.