Far Eastern Economic Review, Issue cover-dated May 02, 2002
Children of War
Trapped in poverty, children on Ambon eagerly signed up for the excitement of
combat. Now, they face living with mental scars that could last a lifetime
By John McBeth/AMBON
Issue cover-dated May 02, 2002
AS THE VOICES of his friends swell into a haunting Ambonese love song, tears glitter
in the eyes of Johannes Supasepa. He turns sideways in his chair, drops his head
and brings his hand up to cover his face. Johannes was only 16 when he killed. He
may do so again. Yet, for a quiet moment, he's just another vulnerable teenager,
caught in the whirlpool of emotions that grip the Indonesian island of Ambon.
At 19, Johannes no longer fits the United Nations definition of a child soldier. Slumped
next to him, 13-year-old Godlif Rahael, certainly does. Dressed in an oversized T-shirt
and baggy shorts, the curly-haired boy is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of
children who have joined in the fighting between Christians and Muslims in the
Moluccan islands over the past three years. That conflict has claimed upwards of
6,000 lives.
Both are typical of what may well be a lost generation--boys who say that they long
for peace, yet live for war. In impoverished communities that can give them little,
fighting offers the children companionship, excitement and--above everything
else--prestige.
"They are so proud of their contribution," sighs John Reinstein, manager of a recently
launched Save the Children programme aimed at luring boy soldiers back to the
classroom. "It's a common thing for them to say they've killed," he adds. "Since the
government can't seem to do anything, they all say they have an obligation to protect
their families and their religion."
Having tasted the excitement of war, it won't be easy to return these children to
normal lives. For one thing, there's little state support. Indonesia is a signatory of the
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which two years ago raised the minimum
age for recruitment and participation in hostilities from 15 to 18 years. But Jakarta has
done almost nothing to tackle the problem.
So most of the work is being left to people like Reinstein, who has enlisted the help of
local non-governmental organizations to get a better sense of the overall problem. It
can be dangerous work. Like all armies, the Christian and Muslim militias don't like to
tell their secrets. A month ago, the children cut short a session and announced they
had to go and fight on the island of Buru, 70 kilometres to the west. "It made me
sick," Reinstein recalls.
He isn't alone in his humanitarian crusade. Sister Brigitta Renyaan, a Catholic nun
from the Kei islands, is working with more than 100 child fighters. "This conflict has
changed the whole future of the children on this island," she says sadly. "Much of it
was spontaneous and there were many kids involved."
Godlif was only nine when he left his home on the neighbouring island of Seram to
stay with his uncle in Ambon, then the thriving commercial and administrative hub of
the Moluccan islands. He went to school for a while, but that all ended when Ambon
exploded in religious fighting in January 1999. Armed with a bow and arrow, Godlif
doesn't think he has killed anyone yet, but he has burned numerous houses and, like
most of the other children, he is ready to do so again.
Johannes lost three uncles early on in a massacre of isolated Christian families. "I
was full of revenge," he says. "Whenever there was any fighting, I was there." Later in
1999, he went back on his own to Seram, where he says he killed a middle-aged man
with a machete after a Muslim attack. "If we had an attack, we had no other choice
than to kill them," he states simply.
Back in Ambon in 2000, Johannes joined an 80-member militant group called Agas, or
The Children of the Church that God Loves. Over the next year, he recalls helping to
fight off 20 separate attacks on the Christian neighbourhood of Ahuru, some of them
led by women and children. "The Muslims had better weapons and were supported by
the military," he claims.
Perhaps, but these days it's the Christian children who appear to be better organized,
though fewer in number. In Ambon city, researchers count nine district-based
Christian groups, each with 20-25 kids aged between 12 and 18. Some carry
home-made weapons and shrapnel bombs. When the fighting was at its peak, the
younger children heaved cans of petrol or stood watch to alert their groups of an
impending attack.
On the Muslim side, they talk of a lithe 14-year-old called Sam, whose exploits
earned him the military title of panglima (commander) before he was shot dead in
2000, a martyr to a cause his parents regarded as a holy war. His former teacher,
Irwan Manggala, has now founded an organization to help the child soldiers. He still
has a vivid recollection of an "energetic" boy who made his own gun and reputedly
killed often.
Manggala points to the wholesale exodus of teachers and worries that there are only
two of an original 16 Muslim junior-high schools left on the island, one with a roll of
2,500 students. Changing attitudes portend a grim future. "Much of their interest in
learning has gone," he says. "They have lost their competitive spirit and they don't
seem to want to further their education. They just want to buy their graduation."
Although there have been no communal clashes on Ambon since last August, the
fighting has traumatized all the island's children, some of whom have seen relatives
killed in front of them. They draw pictures of violence, and of overly idealistic scenes of
peace and tranquillity. They play with plastic guns in the streets. They burst into tears
at sudden noises. The adults around them have no idea how to deal with the
psychological fallout.
Reinstein has seen it all before--in Somalia in the mid-1990s and more recently in
northern Uganda, where Reinstein believes as many as 4,000 kids died. Ambon risks
inheriting the same bitter legacy. For now, he has not attempted to bring children from
the two sides together, but he hopes to eventually. "We want to mainly focus on
specific activities to build relationships," he says, "so they will think twice about
fighting each other."
Copyright ©2002 Review Publishing Company Limited, Hong Kong
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