Firda Janati, Dani Prabowo, Jakarta – Amnesty International Indonesia Executive Director Usman Hamid says that the statement by Minister of Culture Fadli Zon that there were no rapes during the May 1998 riots in Jakarta is a fatal error.
"Fadli Zon stated that the rapes during the May 1998 riots were a rumour, this statement contains a fatal error", said Hamdi during an online press conference with women activists on Friday June 13.
According to Hamid, rumours are stories that cannot be accepted as evidence in court without an authority that knows the truth.
Meanwhile the May 98 rape cases have been factually acknowledged by the authorities and jointly decided on by the Minister of Defence, Minister of Security, Minister of Justice, Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General's Office.
"So the authorities know the truth of the incident, thus, the statement by Cultural Minister Fadli Zon loses its credibility", he added.
In fact, said Hamid, the National Human Rights Commission (Komnas HAM) has already concluded that the rape cases that occurred during the May 98 riots were a gross human rights violation. "So its conclusion was that mass rapes occurred, and as a whole it represented a human right violation", he said.
Therefore, according to Hamid, Zon's statement is in fact like a denial of human rights violations. "If just one woman is raped, it's a tragedy, it's a human rights violation. So I think this minister's statement is more like a denial", he said.
Earlier in an interview with the IDN Times, Zon claimed that there is no evidence of mass rapes in 1998. According to Zon, the incident was only based on rumours and there was never any evidence of mass rapes during the May 1998 affair.
"Now, were there mass rapes? Is it true that there were mass rapes? Who said that? There was never any evidence of that. It's just a story. If there was, show it. Is it in the history books? There never was", said Zon.
Zon admitted that he once refuted a statement by the fact-finding team which provided information that there were mass rapes during the May 98 affair.
"I myself once refuted this and they couldn't prove it. What I mean is, the history we are making is a history that can unite the nation and the tone must be like that", said Zon.
As has been reported, the government through the Ministry of Culture is currently working on a project to rewrite Indonesian history from the era of the country's founding president Sukarno, known affectionately as Bung Karno.
"So, what we want from our history is a positive tone. From the era of Bung Karno to the era of President Jokowi [Joko Widodo] and so on", he said when speaking to reporter in Cibubur, Depok, West Java, on Sunday June 1.
Notes
Fadli Zon is a close confidant of President Prabowo Subianto who has been accused of playing a central role in sparking the May 14, 1998 anti-Chinese riots in Jakarta that saw hundreds of ethnic Chinese women raped and murdered and more than a thousand people killed. At the time, Prabowo was head of the Army's Strategic Reserves (Kostrad) based in Jakarta. In 2003, the National Commission on Human Rights accused Prabowo of responsibility "for gross human rights violations that occurred during the extensive rioting in Jakarta in 1998". The Komnas HAM report said that "security authorities at that time failed to curb the widespread riots that took place simultaneously". The spread of the riots was a result of a specific policy based on the "similar pattern at almost all places where the riots took place, which began with provocation, followed by an attack on civilians".
[Translated by James Balowski. The original title of the article was "Fadli Zon Sebut Tak Ada Pemerkosaan Massal Mei 1998, Usman Hamid: Kekeliruan yang Fatal".]
