Indonesian Army Officers in Firing Line Over Attack on 4 Boys

The National Commission for Child Protection on Tuesday condemned the alleged beating of four minors by Army soldiers.

“It is not only against children’s rights, but also is against human rights as [the soldiers] are state officials and have an obligation to protect the country,” Arist Merdeka Sirait, the secretary general of the commission, known as Komnas Anak. “It is very saddening and it is a gross violation of human rights.”

Arist said the five Army soldiers involved in the alleged beating had been detained by the Military Police.

He said the four boys, the oldest among them 14 years old, were traumatized by the incident.

“However, they went back to school on Monday after we treated them,” he said.

The alleged beating took place in Cilodong, Depok, two weeks ago. Arist said the four boys were physically assaulted by five members of the Army’s Strategic Reserve Command (Kostrad) at night while they were returning to their homes after playing video games.

“They stopped the children and forced them to admit to things that they had not done. They also hit the children with clubs and forced them to undress,” he said.

Arist said the boys were forced to admit that they had been stealing bicycles in a housing complex in Cilodong. He said there had been an incident of a bicycle being stolen in the complex.

“Even if the children stole the bicycle, it does not mean that it should have been settled that way,” he said, adding that the children had not been involved in any thefts.

Arist said it was unfortunate that the soldiers, because of their status as servicemen, could not be charged with violating the Law on Child Protection regarding assault, which carries a minimum prison sentence of five years.

The servicemen will instead be dealt with by a military tribunal, where they could get off with a lesser sanction.

“However, the Military Police have promised to take this case seriously as the servicemen have admitted to their offense,” Arist said.

He said the case would go before a military tribunal after the soldiers had been held for 20 days pending the preparation of their case files.

Major Quake Hits Aceh

A powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake hit Sumatra island early Wednesday, injuring at least four people, one of them critically, in Simeulue district, Aceh province.

A tsunami alert was issued in the province and in Thailand, though both were cancelled.

There are initial reports of widespread panic as locals on Simeulue Island fled to higher ground. Damage has occurred to a number of government buildings.

The quake struck at a depth of 46 kilometers off the northwest coast of Sumatra at 5:15 a.m., according to the US Geological Survey.

Indonesian geologists said it had a magnitude of 7.2 and the epicenter was 60 kilometers southeast of Sinabang, on Simeulue Island, Aceh province, which was devastated by a massive quake and tsunami in 2004.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a watch for tsunamis in Sumatra but said a destructive ocean surge was not expected.

Electricity was down in the Acehnese capital of Banda Aceh but mobile phones were working.

Residents of Banda Aceh said they felt the earth shaking powerfully for about a minute and many fled their homes or piled onto motorcycles to head inland in fear of a destructive tsunami.

“People panicked and ran out of the house, it lasted almost a minute,” a reporter in Banda Aceh said. “I saw a lot of people who live close to the sea using motorcycles to drive inland.”

Indonesia was the nation hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami, with at least 168,000 people killed when the sea surged over the northern tip of Sumatra after a 9.3-magnitude quake split the seabed to the island’s west.

A 7.6-magnitude quake killed about 1,000 people in the port of Padang, western Sumatra, in September last year.

Wild Elephants Trample Aceh’s Remote Villages

Sumatran elephants fight as they bathe in a river
in Tesso Nilo national park, Riau Province

Hundreds of villagers in the district of East Aceh fled to safety after what has been called one of the worst recent outbreaks of elephant attacks in the area, an activist said on Sunday.

Bahtiar, a field officer from Leuser International Foundation of East Aceh, said that a pack of some 30 wild elephants had been rampaging through two remote villages in Serbajadi subdistrict almost daily over the past several days.

“This morning I received a report from some residents of those villages that on Saturday some wild elephants came into the villages, destroyed their houses and ate their crops,” he told.

“Now the local residents are scared and cautious because the elephants chased a villager who tried to scare them off with some traditional methods that included a torch, a bamboo cannon and a carbide cannon,” he added

The neighboring villages that have become the target of the elephants are Kuala Panggoh and Ketibung Busara. Both are government-assigned transmigration areas that have been occupied since the early 1990s.

Bahtiar said that since the elephant attacks began, 48 houses in Kuala Panggoh village had been severely damaged while 52 more had sustained minor damage. Nearly 30 houses have been destroyed in Ketibung Busara.

“The villagers who have lost their homes because of the elephant attacks are now staying in mosques,” he said, adding that some forest rangers and volunteers from nongovernmental organizations were assisting displaced families.

The Natural Resources Conservation Agency (BKSDA), East Aceh’s forestry agency and some environmental activists plan to visit the area on Tuesday.

The team plans to conduct a survey of the location, using the results to build a conservation response unit. Four tame elephants will be included in the unit to chase the wild elephants back to the jungle.

Bahtiar said most conflicts between wild elephants and humans in Aceh stemmed from the clearing of land for plantations. He said that when trees were cut, the elephants lost their natural habitat and food supply.

“Moreover, the newly cleared areas are often planted with rice and palms, which are elephants’ favorite foods,” he said.

Abu Bakar Chekmat, head of the Aceh BKSDA, said that the solution to elephant attacks was to simply stop illegal logging, especially in the elephants’ jungle habitat and along their migration paths.

“Actually, the regional government has made a mistake in the first place by creating a transmigration area in a place surrounded by jungles and mountains,” he said. “One of the solutions to stop these incidents would be to relocate the villagers to another place and restore the area into a conservation jungle.”

East Java Toddler in Sickening Youtube Video

The Indonesian Children Protection Agency has reacted with horror after a video was posted on Youtube in which a toddler from East Java was filmed smoking and answering with explicit langauge a series of questions posed by adults about encounters with prostitutes.

In the three-and-a-half-minute video, the child, addressed as Sandy and who appears no older than four years of age, repeatedly inhales deeply from a large clove cigarette and blows smoke rings while he answers the questions in Javanese.

Adults: Sandy, what do you want be when you grow up?
Sandy: A thief.
Adults: What will you spend your money on?
Sandy: On hookers.
Adults: Where?
Sandy: Dolly [Dolly prostitution complex in Surabaya, East Java].
Adults: What’s the best thing in the world?
Sandy: Vaginas

The adults then asked him to demonstrate intercourse, to which the child responds by shaking his hips.

Eddy Iksan from the Pusaka Indonesia Foundation, which is a member of the Indonesian Children Protection Commission (KPAI), said the adults had clearly violated the 2003 Child Protection Law.

“They used the child to verbally spread pornography, that’s a violation of the Child Protection Law and it’s obvious that they were recording the conversation to publish or to expose it to public,” Eddy said.

He added that the police should start an investigation because Sandy was clearly being abused.

“It’s child abuse,” Eddy said. “Teaching a toddler to smoke and speak foul language is an abuse of the child’s rights for a stable environment and a good education. Police should take action.”

The person who uploaded the video on Youtube did not mention the location where the video was taken. However, the dialect sounded similar to that spoken by people in East Java.

The video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Yrjtu_OLA, was removed from Youtube about 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday.