The politics of commemorating the May 1998 mass rapes

It has been argued that the Jakarta riots in May 1998 were systematic and ethnically charged. In particular, newly formed womens political groups within the state called attention to the issue of state and military violence against women. Correspondingly, Chinese diaspora groups expressed their outrage at what they called ethnic violence and abuses of human rights. While there is a need to break the silence about these events and to challenge the voices of denial and blame, the commemorative representations of the mass rapes by Indonesian womens groups and by Chinese diaspora political groups have limitations. The violence has been construed as being against either Indonesian women or ethnic Chinese and the commemorative representations play down the particular combination of both sexism and racism endured by Chinese Indonesian females in Indonesia. The act of commemorative representation can only be limited, and this implies that trauma narratives are more than just a symbol (or representation) of a groups political struggle.