Families of maimed children worry over medical bills

Teuku Agam Muzakir, The Jakarta Post, Langsa, Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam

Eight children seriously injured in a grenade blast in Paya Lipah village, Peureulak subdistrict, were still in intensive care on Wednesday in the Langsa General Hospital, East Aceh regency.

The children were being constantly attended to by family members.

Alibasyah, 55, wearing only a white singlet, appeared distraught as he sat beside the bed where his son Rasyidin, 14, lay in bandages.

Rasyidin's right arm was severely injured and had to be amputated at the shoulder. He was the most seriously injured of the eight children.

Alibasyah, a fisherman, never expected to be visited with such a nightmare -- periodically worsened by Rasyidin's cries of pain during his few lucid moments.

Alibasyah was also worried about the high cost of his son's medical treatment.

"I don't know how I'm going to find the money to pay for the hospital," he said in a low voice in the hospital's intensive care unit.

There was no word as to whether the local government would help cover the victims' medical costs.

The fatal accident took place on Monday -- polling day -- at a time when many of the adults from Paya Lipah were voting at a neighboring village.

Rasyidin was playing with his friends in a paddy field in the nearby Blang Glong area when he discovered an object shaped like a flashlight and a number of rounds of ammunition.

Unfortunately, Rasyidin decided to take what he had found home.

Alibasyah said his son had no idea what the objects were. In reality, however, the flashlight-shaped object was a grenade of the type fired from a grenade launcher.

Upon arriving at the house of his friend, Zulkarnain Hasan, Rasyidin showed the objects to Zulkarnain and some other friends.

He then attempted to unscrew the lower part of the projectile, and when he found he could not open it, he started banging it on the long bench that he and his friends were sitting on. It was then that the grenade exploded.

Shrapnel from the grenade shattered Rasyidin's right arm, while the seven other children were also badly injured.

The blast alerted a number of people who were in the process of returning home from the polling station, located about two kilometers away from Paya Lipah.

When the adults found the children, they took them to the nearest hospital, located some 10 kilometers away. Paya Lipah is a remote village, and is situated in one of the most dangerous areas for the Indonesian Military (TNI), currently engaged in an operation to crush a separatist insurgency in the province. Aceh has been under martial law since May 2003.

At the moment, besides their grief and worry, all the victims' families are preoccupied about how to pay their children's hospital bills. No help has been forthcoming so far.

"We are all poor people. I don't even have enough money to pay for my own child, let alone help the other children who were injured because of what my son did," Alibasyah said.