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View all search resultsCulture minister’s denial of mass rape in 1998 riots sparks outrage
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Activists hold posters on May 15 during the 861st Kamisan (Thursday) peaceful protest in front of the State Palace in Jakarta. The protest called on the Attorney General's Office (AGO) to take concrete action on unresolved human rights violations that occurred in May 1998. (Antara/Fathul Habib Sholeh)
C
ulture Minister Fadli Zon’s denial of mass rape during the May 1998 riots has triggered a wave of condemnation, with rights groups warning that it reflects a growing effort to sanitize Indonesia’s violent past and erase the long-ignored suffering of Chinese-Indonesian women during one of the nation’s darkest chapters.
The backlash followed Fadli appearance in a YouTube interview with IDN Times, during which he was asked about his ministry’s controversial project to release new history books that would adopt a “more positive tone” toward each of the country’s past presidents.
The project, set to launch during the nation’s 80th independence day in August this year, has already drawn pushback from scholars for omitting major human rights violations, especially those committed during the authoritarian rule of Soeharto, then the father-in-law of President Prabowo Subianto.
Among the events left out of the circulating draft are the May 1998 riots, which left more than 1,000 dead and saw Chinese Indonesians, who had been long scapegoated and discriminated against, subjected to violent attacks, including the mass rape of Chinese-Indonesian women, in unrest that preceded the Soeharto’s fall.
In the 41-minute interview, Fadli dismissed the mass sexual violence during the 1998 unrest as mere “rumors”, claiming there was no evidence substantiating the events and that reports of the violence were never officially recorded in historical documents.
“There was never any proof. It’s just a story,” said Fadli, who is also a politician of Prabowo’s Gerindra Party.
He also denied findings by a government-sanctioned fact-finding team that identified at least 85 victims of sexual violence, most of them Chinese-Indonesian women. The team was established by late president BJ Habibie shortly after Soeharto’s resignation.
