The May 1998 sexual violence on apakabar

How the reports of rape during the riots of 13–15 May 1998 reached the list, how they were contested, and how the inquiries were followed.

Messages are sorted into three tiers. From 13 May 1998 on, 3,097 messages mention rape or sexual violence at all, many of them about East Timor, Aceh or Papua. In 617 the violence appears in the same paragraph as the riots, Chinese Indonesians or the inquiries (tier 2 and above), and 57 are mainly about it (tier 3: the violence runs through the text, with twelve or more mentions per thousand words spread over a quarter of its paragraphs, or eight under a title that names it).

A keyword net: it finds reports, denials, appeals and debate alike, and misses messages that use other words. On a check of 50 messages, 98% of tier 2 and above were about the May violence (first pass). For tier 3 the share of messages mainly about it was 86% (50 checked, first pass), below the 90% target: treat the focused list as a starting point and count with tiers 2 and 3 together. From May to October 1998, 100% of the database's messages survive.

Messages that may name survivors or private people are open only to approved researchers, and their titles are withheld below until an editor has reviewed them.

The first messages

These messages complement the May 1998 Sexual Violence Archive (Nathanael Pribady), which collects the TGPF report, Tim Relawan documentation, the Indonesian and foreign press, UN records and testimony.