More than a month after widespread riots struck Indonesia's capital, reports have surfaced that scores of women were raped during the pillage and lawlessness in which about 1,200 people were killed.

Activists groups estimate more than 100 rapes took place, many in a frighteningly systematic fashion, targeting women in the ethnic Chinese minority. The Chinese community also bore the brunt of the physical damage and terror of the mid-May riots.The traumatized rape victims have mostly remained silent because of shame and fear of retaliation, activists said. Only now is the subject being more freely discussed.

"Now that the people know such an atrocity happened in their community, they are very, very sad," Ita Naida, chairwoman of the Kalyanmitra women's group, told Reuters Television in an interview.

"They never thought that such a thing would happen in Indonesia," she said.

The gang rapes took on a disturbingly similar pattern throughout Jakarta on May 14 as rioters took control of most of the city of 10 million.

"In one part of Jakarta, I don't want to say where, the sexual harassment occurred at the same time with all the women in the same street being raped and sexually harassed," Naida said.

"First they came and attacked their house, after that if they found women, if there were two or three, they would choose the youngest woman," she said.

"After they attacked the house, they raped, and after that they burnt the house. It was systematic, it was like an operation. Attacking, rape and burning the house. It was the same in all the places," she said.

Prominent members of the ethnic Chinese community said the consequences were too hard to take for some of the women victims.

View Comments

"These women who became victims of gang rape have tried to hide themselves," hotel manager Lim Sian Tie told reporters after attending a seminar last week on riot trauma at the University of Indonesia.

"They don't want to be identified. They try to cower and hide themselves from the public as the trauma is so unbearable. They don't want to see anybody," Lim said.

"Fortunately, these are still alive. Some of them, so I have been told, have committed suicide," he said.

One woman, he was told, killed herself by drinking insecticide after she was raped in front of her husband and children in the Chinatown district of North Jakarta.

Join the Conversation
Looking for comments?
Find comments in their new home! Click the buttons at the top or within the article to view them — or use the button below for quick access.