Chicago Tribune

By Uli Schmetzer
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Weeks later, Aileen remains traumatized by the men who broke into her room and raped and mutilated her. They singled her out, she is convinced, because she is Chinese.

Scores of Chinese women report similarly brutal experiences in Indonesia this year, victims of a vicious expression of ethnic hatred in a nation with a history of interracial blood feuds.

Trying to project an image of stability in a country that has seen ist leader toppled and sections of its capital burned by rioters over the last few months, President B.J. Habibie apologized recently to Indonesia's ethnic Chinese residents for the apparently organized rapes of Chinese women.

Government ministers admit Chinese women have been gang-raped ever since mobs in mid-May torched more than 5,000 Chinese stores and shopping malls, led by agitators yelling, "Death to the Chinese."

Intelligence sources believe the rapes are part of a campaign by paramilitary groups in league with Jakarta's organized crime groups.

Its purpose, they say, is to frighten an affluent Chinese minority into leaving the country -- and their property.

Intimidated by rapes, threats and extortion, the Chinese face a wrenching dilemma: If they stay they could be targeted; if they leave they may lose their property and livelihoods.

"I would never think of leaving," said a Chinese businesswoman in East Jakarta. "I was born here and so were my parents. Like every Chinese who stays, we now pay protection to the army and people who come around asking for money to buy food. That's the way it is now."

Usman Lubis, a member of the Indonesian People's Advisers Assembly, a kind of senate, has urged the government to give those Chinese who fled abroad after the May riots a deadline to return. He advocated that the government cancel the business licenses and confiscate the property of all Chinese who fail to return before the deadline.

"I feel it is time for the government to give opportunities to the native Indonesians to run the economy in their own country," he said.

Lubis' statement echoed the belief of most Indonesians. They believe that ethnic Chinese -- who comprise 3 percent of the population of 200 million but own an estimated 75 percent of the private economy - must give up part of their disproportionate wealth to salvage the country from economic turmoil.

Such threats are unlikely to influence Indonesia's Chinese tycoons, who have transferred to Singapore alone an estimated $80 billion of their assets this year. Their funds, know-how and financial networks are essential if Indonesia is to recover from its crippling recession.

Aileen, 24, is still in the hospital. She does not want to speak to anyone, nor does her Chinese landlady in East Jakarta's Sunter district. The district is a middle-class area inhabited by ethnic Chinese who make their living from ground-floor shops and reside above them. The windows are shuttered now, the doors triple-locked.

The landlady rents out rooms above her shop to Chinese working women from the countryside. She was warned by an anonymous phone call that the raid would come, three days before it did on July 2.

In broad daylight, the four masked men broke into the shop. Upstairs they found only Aileen, a waitress, asleep. The other women had gone to work.

Left in a pool of blood, Aileen was taken to hospital for surgery.

"The same phone caller warned me afterward to keep quiet or else they would know how to find me," the landlady said.

Volunteer women workers, many of them indignant Indonesians, have been told to stop their investigation into the rapes or face retribution "because you're giving the country a bad name."

So far, social workers such as Ita Fatia Nadia have documented 182 rape cases in Jakarta, mainly during May and early June. She believes these cases are a small fraction of the total.

Most of the information checked out by her organization came from relatives after the victims had been taken out of the country. The majority of rape victims were flown by their families or by Chinese networks for treatment to Perth, Australia, or to Singapore.

"Traditionally, Chinese families refuse to publicize their grievances. They have no faith in the authorities and try to protect the victims from future stigmatization. Mothers will always say

it didn't happen to their daughters, even if we know from the circumstances it did," said social

worker and Sinologist Myra Sidharta.

Social workers found that about 20 of the rape victims were killed by their assailants. Two others committed suicide when they found they were pregnant.

One girl described how six men raped her. Her younger sister was stabbed to death when she spat into a rapist's face. Her uncle offered money to the attackers but was killed. Her aunt was raped and her parents beaten.

A report by the National Committee on Human Rights concluded: "Chinese-Indonesian women were raped repeatedly by many in front of their neighbors. Some were asked to dance naked.

"The rapists wanted to scare and disgrace the victims and to fill Chinese-Indonesians with terror."