RI children face uncertain future

RI children face uncertain future

Indonesian children have for the past few years witnessed
excessive violence around them. Many have been killed in armed
conflicts in Aceh, Maluku, West Kalimantan and East Timor.
However, even a greater number are facing an equally rough, if
not worse, fate because they are forced to enter prostitution or
hard labor. In commemoration of National Children's Day on July
23, The Jakarta Post reporters Ati Nurbaiti and Santi W.E.
Soekanto and correspondent Jupriadi explore the issue. Related
stories are on Page 5.

JAKARTA (JP): Fifteen-year-old Ranti wept with pain when an
elderly man deflowered her at a brothel in Jakarta, but she
managed to stop crying upon being told he would pay her Rp
700,000 (US$106).

As it turned out, she received only Rp 50,000 because most of
the money went to her "Mama Yuyun" who took her and her friend
Santi as new additions into the collection of young girls between
the ages of 14 to 20 at her brothel in the Kota downtown area.
Most of the "guests" here are men aged about 35 years or older,
who believe sleeping with teenage girls revive their virility and
signs of manhood.

The "Mama" insisted most of the money went to Ranti's father
and a procurer who brought the girls to Jakarta from a small West
Java village where parents, aunts and uncles, and even village
officials prepare girls for prostitution at an early age. Some
mothers prefer to have their daughters work as prostitutes rather
than see them "laze around" at home.

"He (the elderly first client) told me that if I did it often
enough, it wouldn't hurt any more," Ranti told a researcher
commissioned by the International Program of the Elimination of
Child Labor (IPEC), which is an arm of the International Labor
Organization.

"Every guest pays Mama between Rp 75,000 and Rp 100,000 for a
date of up to three hours. I didn't know how much I made because
Mama took some of it for my room and board," Ranti said.

Ranti went home when she felt she could no longer tolerate
clients who demanded that she do "perverse things", but she could
not stay home for too long because her mother nagged her to
return and make money. She moved to another brothel, where she
got her first experience of venereal disease.

"I felt hot flashes, lots of pain down there," she said.

Ranti went back home, and her mother took her to a doctor who
gave her three injections. Within two weeks, she recovered, and
her mother again sent her away.

Santi recounted how her parents and elder sister Ira talked
her out of marriage with a poor mechanic when she was 14.
Instead, Ira took her to a procurer known by many locals as Pak
Rahmat who then brought them both to Jakarta.

"I knew I would get a lot of money because I was still a
virgin, unlike Ira who was already divorced," Santi said. "As far
as I know, my father received Rp 1 million from Pak Rahmat for
allowing him to take me with him."

Santi's father then took the girl to the village official, who
took note of the brothel that Santi was being sent to and her
alias.

"When I had my first guest, I cried, because he was so rough,"
Santi said. "A lot of blood came out of me."

The Mama gave her two days respite, before making her return
to work where she met her second guest, a 50-year-old man who
wanted to be called Oom Roy and bought Santi clothes and gave her
big tips on subsequent visits.

Every month, Santi's parents came to collect up to Rp 750,000
from her. "I am not afraid of the 'dirty disease' because I take
herbal concoctions and wash myself after receiving guests."

Ranti and Santi were among the seven prostituted children
studied by the researchers, who also studied five brothel owners,
seven customers, 15 friends and relatives of the prostituted
children and eight procurers in Greater Jakarta, Indramayu in
West Java, Surabaya and Banyuwangi in East Java.

The ILO adopted in June the International Convention No. 182
on the elimination of the worst forms of child labor, which it
defines as, among other things, "the use, procuring or offering
of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or
for pornographic performances".

Schools

School is, of course, out of the picture now for Ranti, Santi
and others like her. But in some areas, school has become a
nonoption, no matter how temporarily, for children simply because
there are no schools.

Some 15,000 children in the troubled regencies of East Aceh,
North Aceh and Pidie could not go back to class in the new
academic year that began on July 19 because around 110 schools
were burned down in conflicts between the military and the
separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM).

Some Rp 15 billion would be needed to rebuild and repair the
torched buildings, Governor Syamsuddin Mahmud said.

But every second of precious time is being wasted and formal
classes will not be resumed for some time.

The list of child victims of violence is long. The Foundation
of Indonesian Children's Welfare (YKAI) says 64 children between
the ages of six and 18 were killed in the Santa Cruz military
shooting in Dili, East Timor, in 1991.

In the clash between military personnel and followers of
Warsidi, the leader of a religious sect, 66 children between the
ages of one and 18 allegedly died.

In the May 1998 riots in Jakarta, one 13 year old and one
eight-month-old infant died of gunshot wounds, while 20 other
children between the ages of 12 and 17 died in burning buildings.

In the military shooting in Simpang KKA, Lhokseumawe, Aceh, on
May 3, 1999, eight children between the ages of six and 17 died
of gunshot wounds, while 22 others were seriously injured. During
the unrest on May 15, 1999, in Ambon, two children reportedly
died of gunshot wounds.

Child prostitutes and child victims of violence are indeed
touchy subjects, but activist Panji Putranto of IPEC pleads for
attention for the majority of children whose fate is never
reported by the media. Some 70 percent of child workers labor
long and hard in rural areas, where their economic contribution
to their families is taken for granted.

These children do not go to school, but work in the fields, do
chores at home and simply re-tread the path to poverty that their
parents took before them. The domestic child workers, at the
tender age of 10, are taken to the homes of richer folks where
they serve their days away without adequate rest or play, which
is their right.

There are organizations and activists who strive to assist the
child prostitutes and street children, but the young people in
rural areas are often not as lucky. They will grow up and
struggle to escape poverty by seeking menial jobs in Malaysia,
Saudi Arabia or Hong Kong.

One of the reasons there are no programs to help the silent
majority is that people simply do not see any problems, Panji
said. "How can you raise noise about a problem which people think
is not a problem?" Panji said. "Many people employ children as
their servants and do not see it is wrong."