Protecting our children

A word of praise is due to the Jakarta Police team that ended the drama of the abduction of Muhamad Hegel Muthahhari, 8, and arrested the abductors on Friday.

It took the officers 10 days to find Hegel, but the boy was rescued, safe and sound, and the abductors, Doni Wibisono and Nurul Lestaluhu, were arrested while hiding in a room at Hotel Horison, Ancol, North Jakarta, thanks to a pair of slippers bearing the hotel's logo found at Nurul's house in Muara Baru, North Jakarta.

The abduction was allegedly masterminded by Nurul's husband, Taher alias Abah, as well as Nurul and Doni, who were "accompanying" Hegel in the hotel room and are being interrogated by the police. Taher is still at large.

The abductors initially demanded a Rp 4 billion (US$465,111 ransom, but in the end reduced the amount to Rp 400 million. As reported by the media, Hegel's parents transferred Rp 25 million to the Bank Central Asia (BCA) account of a certain Sayogo Hendro, which led the police to the (alleged) abductors' address in Cisarua, West Java. The two, however, had already moved to North Jakarta.

After a string of terrorist acts that have kept the police more than busy, the arrest of Hegel's abductors obviously brings a degree of kudos to the Jakarta Police. Tuesday's JW Marriott Hotel bomb blast, coming not long in the wake of two previous bombings -- one at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and the other at the House of Representatives complex -- must have caused the police to contemplate and review their shortcomings amid widespread public criticism.

Many have asserted that the blasts prove that the police have been lax in maintaining security in public places, including vital facilities such as the airport and the House complex. While the police have become busier by the day because of the bombing incidents, we do hope that they will not loosen their vigilance on crime, which now includes kidnappings. Thank God that one of the abductions has been dealt with properly.

However, the police's success in solving Hegel's case is overshadowed by the still unsolved cases of another six children kidnapped from March until July. Two of them, a two-year-old girl and an eight-year-old girl, were found dead after apparently being sexually assaulted, while two others have been released. The fate of the two other children is still unknown. The two-year-old girl was abducted in Pademangan, North Jakarta, in March while the eight-year-old was kidnapped in Cipayung, East Jakarta. The other four children were abducted in Cianjur, West Java.

Police assume that the six crimes were committed by the same group of mentally unstable people. One of the alleged abductors, identified as Dani alias Deni Saputra, was arrested in the East Java provincial capital, Surabaya, while his brother, Jerry alias Jefri Saputra, is still at large. No further information on the results of the questioning of Dani is available. What people know so far is that the police have yet to find the group, plus the two children they are still holding.

The ominous message to be learned from all of this is that danger threatens children anywhere. Hegel's abduction is believed to be related to the position of the boy's father as a top executive in a company in the gold trade. The motives for the abduction of the other five are still unclear.

The message conveyed by the bomb blasts and the abductions, as far as Jakarta's citizenry is concerned, is clear: nobody, including children, is safe in the capital. We all have to face the fact that nobody's security is guaranteed. The recent abductions also teach us that we should not trust anyone, especially when it comes to our children.

They, too, are now targets of potentially lethal acts of terror.

We suggest that the police start to develop a new approach to dealing with abduction and the better protection of our children. Alarm bells are ringing for parents to be more alert, as anybody could kidnap their children, anywhere, anytime. They must never leave their small children unwatched, even for a second. Simply depending on the police is not enough. Parents should establish a kind of network to protect their children, at least in their own residential areas or neighborhoods. In the end, who else can children rely on to protect them, if not their own parents?