krazibutkoo
Rookie
West Papua's youth are being removed to Islamic religious schools in Java for "re-education", writes Michael Bachelard.
Captive audience Papuan boys at the Daarur Rasul Islamic boarding school, outside Jakarta, behind locked gates. Photo: Michael Bachelard
Johanes Lokobal sits on the grass that cushions the wooden floor of his little, one-room house. He warms his hands at a fire set in the centre. From time to time a pig, out of sight in an annex, squeals and slams itself thunderously against the adjoining wall.
The village of Megapura in the central highlands of Indonesia's far-eastern province of West Papua is so remote that supplies arrive by air or by foot only. Johanes Lokobal has lived here all his life. He does not know his exact age: "Just old," he croaks. He's also poor. "I help in the fields. I earn about 20,000 rupiah [$2] per day. I clean the school garden." But in a hard life, one hardship particularly offends him. In 2005, his only son, Yope, was taken to faraway Jakarta. Lokobal did not want Yope to go. The boy was perhaps 14, but big and strong, a good worker. The men responsible took him anyway. A few years later, Yope died. Nobody can tell Lokobal how, nor exactly when, and he has no idea where his son is buried. All he knows, fiercely, is that this was not supposed to happen.
"If he was still alive, he would be the one to look after the family," Lokobal says. "He would go to the forest to collect the firewood for the family. So I am sad."
Heavy learning boys and girls at Daarur Rasul. Photo: Michael Bachelard
The men who took Yope were part of an organised traffic in West Papuan youth. A six-month Good Weekend investigation has confirmed that children, possibly in their thousands, have been enticed away over the past decade or more with the promise of a free education. In a province where the schools are poor and the families poorer still, no-cost schooling can be an irresistible offer.
Advertisement
But for some of these children, who may be as young as five, it's only when they arrive that they find out they have been recruited by "pesantren", Islamic boarding schools, where time to study maths, science or language is dwarfed by the hours spent in the mosque. There, in the words of one pesantren leader, "They learn to honour God, which is the main thing." These schools have one aim: to send their graduates back to Christian-majority Papua to spread their muscular form of Islam.
Ask the 100 Papuan boys and girls at the Daarur Rasul school outside Jakarta what they want to be when they grow up and they shout, "Ustad! Ustad! [religious teacher]."
Watch and learn students watch a performance of singing, dancing and wrestling. Photo: Michael Bachelard
In Papua, particularly in the Highlands, the issues of religious and cultural identity are red-hot. Census data from over the past four decades shows that the indigenous population is now matched in number by recent migrants, largely Muslims, from other parts of Indonesia. The newcomers' domination of the economy, particularly in the western half of the province, effectively marginalises the original inhabitants. This immigration means that indigenous Papuans have a real - and realistic - fear of becoming an ethnic and religious minority in their own country. Stories of people taking away their children adds an emotive edge and has the potential to inflame tensions in an already volatile region.
For about 50 years, a separatist insurgency has been active in Papua and hundreds of thousands have died in their efforts to gain independence for the province. Christianity, brought by Dutch and German missionaries, is both the faith of a vast majority of the indigenous population, and a key part of their identity. Islam actually has an even longer history in Papua than Christianity, but it's of a gentler kind than what's preached in Java's increasingly hardline mosques and it's still, for the moment at least, the minority religion. But when the pesantren children return from Java, their faith has changed. "They become different persons," Papuan Christian leader Benny Giay, tells me. "They have been brainwashed".
The schools insist they recruit only students who are already Muslims, but it's clear they are not too fussy. At Daarur Rasul, I quickly found two little boys, Filipus and Aldi, who were mualaf - brand new converts from Christianity. One radical Islamic organisation, Al Fatih Kafah Nusantara (AFKN), makes no bones about its intention to convert, and to use religion for political ends. Leader Fadzlan Garamatan says AFKN has brought 2200 children out of Papua as part of his program of nationalistic "Islamicisation" . "When [Papuans] convert to Islam, their desire to be independent reduces," says Fadzlan on AFKN's internet page.
Johanes Lokobal says his son died after being taken to an Islamic school. Photo: Michael Bachelard
In restive West Papua, the movement and conversion of young children is politically explosive. We were warned a number of times not to chase the story. It's never reported in the Indonesian press. The chief of the Indonesia government's Jakarta-based Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua, Bambang Darmono, downplays it as just one of "many issues in Papua", and the Religious Affairs Ministry's director of pesantrens, Saefudin, says he has never heard of it. But my efforts to trace the life and death of one Papuan boy has revealed that the trade goes on. And, in the service of grand religious and political aims, sometimes young lives are broken.
Elias Lokobal smiles to himself when he talks about the feisty little stepbrother he lost, but when talk turns to Amir Lani, his expression darkens. Lani is a local cleric in Megapura and the other villages surrounding the highland capital, Wamena. It was in about 2005 when he and Aloysius Kowenip, the police chief from the nearby town of Yahukimo, began approaching families to recruit their children. The pair worked to take five boys from vulnerable families in each of five villages and transport them to Java for education. Kowenip, a Christian, says it was his idea to "help" the children, and that the funding came from "the local government and an Islamic organisation" whose name he could not remember. He says he sought out children with only one living parent because "nobody guided them".
Young Yope was one such boy. Although he had a stepmother, his natural mother had died. His family was Muslim, though Yope sometimes went to a Christian church with his uncle. Neither Lani nor Kowenip ever visited Yope's father, Johanes Lokobal, to explain their scheme. It still rankles. "These people should ask permission from the parents," Lokobal says. Instead, they asked young Yope himself, who was enthusiastic about this adventure. Some friends had gone the previous year and he was keen to join them.
When it came time for Yope to depart, it happened in a flash, stepbrother Elias recalls. "I went to school, and when I came back there was no one home."
Andreas Asso was part of the same group. Now a shy young man scrabbling a living in Jayapura, the capital of West Papua, he was perhaps 15 at the time. Like Yope, Andreas had only one parent. His father was dead and, though his mother was alive, he was living with his stepmother. Like Yope, he was approached directly. "They asked if I wanted to pursue my study in Jakarta for free," Andreas says. "The police chief never spoke to my stepmum but he spoke to my uncle, the brother of my father, and he agreed. I was born Christian and I'll always be Christian. The police chief just said we'd be put in a boarding house ... If he had told us it would be a pesantren, none of us would have wanted to go."
When the day came to leave, Andreas says a group of 19 boys were loaded into an Indonesian air force Hercules C-130 aircraft in Wamena. By some accounts, the youngest of them was just five. The plane was crewed by men in uniform. It has been difficult to verify whether the military was officially involved, but a former Papuan army chief says civilians are permitted to buy cheap tickets to fly on military aircraft as part of the military's "corporate social responsibility". "We didn't speak to the soldiers," Andreas recalls. "We were afraid."
It took two days for the plane to reach Jakarta and, "we were not fed or offered drinks. A few, especially the little ones, got sick ... a few vomited," Andreas says. "When they came to my village, I thought I wanted to go. But when I was in the aeroplane, all I was thinking was, 'I want to go back to my village.' " When they landed in Jakarta, the boys were driven about three hours to their new home - the Jamiyyah Al-Wafa Al-Islamiyah pesantren, high on the slopes of the volcano, Mount Salak, behind the regional city of Bogor. The head of the Al-Wafa school's foundation, Harun Al Rasyid, remembers Andreas Asso and the boys from Wamena, and the men who brought them, Amir Lani and Aloysius Kowenip, whom he knows as "Aloy". The two men had come and "offered the students" in 2005, he recalls. "Aloy was ambitious in politics, and bringing children to my pesantren was a way to improve his standing or image in society," Al Rasyid says.
Andreas Asso's account and his differ on many points but they concur on one: the boys from the village in the wild highlands of Papua simply did not fit in. "It wasn't like a real school because in school they have classes," Andreas says. "In this one, we just went to a big mosque and all we learnt about was Islam, just reading the Koran. Sometimes they slapped us on the face, beat us with a wooden stick. They just told us we Papuans were black, we have dark skin."
They're taking our children
Really long article couldn't post the whole thing
Captive audience Papuan boys at the Daarur Rasul Islamic boarding school, outside Jakarta, behind locked gates. Photo: Michael Bachelard
Johanes Lokobal sits on the grass that cushions the wooden floor of his little, one-room house. He warms his hands at a fire set in the centre. From time to time a pig, out of sight in an annex, squeals and slams itself thunderously against the adjoining wall.
The village of Megapura in the central highlands of Indonesia's far-eastern province of West Papua is so remote that supplies arrive by air or by foot only. Johanes Lokobal has lived here all his life. He does not know his exact age: "Just old," he croaks. He's also poor. "I help in the fields. I earn about 20,000 rupiah [$2] per day. I clean the school garden." But in a hard life, one hardship particularly offends him. In 2005, his only son, Yope, was taken to faraway Jakarta. Lokobal did not want Yope to go. The boy was perhaps 14, but big and strong, a good worker. The men responsible took him anyway. A few years later, Yope died. Nobody can tell Lokobal how, nor exactly when, and he has no idea where his son is buried. All he knows, fiercely, is that this was not supposed to happen.
"If he was still alive, he would be the one to look after the family," Lokobal says. "He would go to the forest to collect the firewood for the family. So I am sad."
Heavy learning boys and girls at Daarur Rasul. Photo: Michael Bachelard
The men who took Yope were part of an organised traffic in West Papuan youth. A six-month Good Weekend investigation has confirmed that children, possibly in their thousands, have been enticed away over the past decade or more with the promise of a free education. In a province where the schools are poor and the families poorer still, no-cost schooling can be an irresistible offer.
Advertisement
But for some of these children, who may be as young as five, it's only when they arrive that they find out they have been recruited by "pesantren", Islamic boarding schools, where time to study maths, science or language is dwarfed by the hours spent in the mosque. There, in the words of one pesantren leader, "They learn to honour God, which is the main thing." These schools have one aim: to send their graduates back to Christian-majority Papua to spread their muscular form of Islam.
Ask the 100 Papuan boys and girls at the Daarur Rasul school outside Jakarta what they want to be when they grow up and they shout, "Ustad! Ustad! [religious teacher]."
Watch and learn students watch a performance of singing, dancing and wrestling. Photo: Michael Bachelard
In Papua, particularly in the Highlands, the issues of religious and cultural identity are red-hot. Census data from over the past four decades shows that the indigenous population is now matched in number by recent migrants, largely Muslims, from other parts of Indonesia. The newcomers' domination of the economy, particularly in the western half of the province, effectively marginalises the original inhabitants. This immigration means that indigenous Papuans have a real - and realistic - fear of becoming an ethnic and religious minority in their own country. Stories of people taking away their children adds an emotive edge and has the potential to inflame tensions in an already volatile region.
For about 50 years, a separatist insurgency has been active in Papua and hundreds of thousands have died in their efforts to gain independence for the province. Christianity, brought by Dutch and German missionaries, is both the faith of a vast majority of the indigenous population, and a key part of their identity. Islam actually has an even longer history in Papua than Christianity, but it's of a gentler kind than what's preached in Java's increasingly hardline mosques and it's still, for the moment at least, the minority religion. But when the pesantren children return from Java, their faith has changed. "They become different persons," Papuan Christian leader Benny Giay, tells me. "They have been brainwashed".
The schools insist they recruit only students who are already Muslims, but it's clear they are not too fussy. At Daarur Rasul, I quickly found two little boys, Filipus and Aldi, who were mualaf - brand new converts from Christianity. One radical Islamic organisation, Al Fatih Kafah Nusantara (AFKN), makes no bones about its intention to convert, and to use religion for political ends. Leader Fadzlan Garamatan says AFKN has brought 2200 children out of Papua as part of his program of nationalistic "Islamicisation" . "When [Papuans] convert to Islam, their desire to be independent reduces," says Fadzlan on AFKN's internet page.
Johanes Lokobal says his son died after being taken to an Islamic school. Photo: Michael Bachelard
In restive West Papua, the movement and conversion of young children is politically explosive. We were warned a number of times not to chase the story. It's never reported in the Indonesian press. The chief of the Indonesia government's Jakarta-based Unit for the Acceleration of Development in Papua and West Papua, Bambang Darmono, downplays it as just one of "many issues in Papua", and the Religious Affairs Ministry's director of pesantrens, Saefudin, says he has never heard of it. But my efforts to trace the life and death of one Papuan boy has revealed that the trade goes on. And, in the service of grand religious and political aims, sometimes young lives are broken.
Elias Lokobal smiles to himself when he talks about the feisty little stepbrother he lost, but when talk turns to Amir Lani, his expression darkens. Lani is a local cleric in Megapura and the other villages surrounding the highland capital, Wamena. It was in about 2005 when he and Aloysius Kowenip, the police chief from the nearby town of Yahukimo, began approaching families to recruit their children. The pair worked to take five boys from vulnerable families in each of five villages and transport them to Java for education. Kowenip, a Christian, says it was his idea to "help" the children, and that the funding came from "the local government and an Islamic organisation" whose name he could not remember. He says he sought out children with only one living parent because "nobody guided them".
Young Yope was one such boy. Although he had a stepmother, his natural mother had died. His family was Muslim, though Yope sometimes went to a Christian church with his uncle. Neither Lani nor Kowenip ever visited Yope's father, Johanes Lokobal, to explain their scheme. It still rankles. "These people should ask permission from the parents," Lokobal says. Instead, they asked young Yope himself, who was enthusiastic about this adventure. Some friends had gone the previous year and he was keen to join them.
When it came time for Yope to depart, it happened in a flash, stepbrother Elias recalls. "I went to school, and when I came back there was no one home."
Andreas Asso was part of the same group. Now a shy young man scrabbling a living in Jayapura, the capital of West Papua, he was perhaps 15 at the time. Like Yope, Andreas had only one parent. His father was dead and, though his mother was alive, he was living with his stepmother. Like Yope, he was approached directly. "They asked if I wanted to pursue my study in Jakarta for free," Andreas says. "The police chief never spoke to my stepmum but he spoke to my uncle, the brother of my father, and he agreed. I was born Christian and I'll always be Christian. The police chief just said we'd be put in a boarding house ... If he had told us it would be a pesantren, none of us would have wanted to go."
When the day came to leave, Andreas says a group of 19 boys were loaded into an Indonesian air force Hercules C-130 aircraft in Wamena. By some accounts, the youngest of them was just five. The plane was crewed by men in uniform. It has been difficult to verify whether the military was officially involved, but a former Papuan army chief says civilians are permitted to buy cheap tickets to fly on military aircraft as part of the military's "corporate social responsibility". "We didn't speak to the soldiers," Andreas recalls. "We were afraid."
It took two days for the plane to reach Jakarta and, "we were not fed or offered drinks. A few, especially the little ones, got sick ... a few vomited," Andreas says. "When they came to my village, I thought I wanted to go. But when I was in the aeroplane, all I was thinking was, 'I want to go back to my village.' " When they landed in Jakarta, the boys were driven about three hours to their new home - the Jamiyyah Al-Wafa Al-Islamiyah pesantren, high on the slopes of the volcano, Mount Salak, behind the regional city of Bogor. The head of the Al-Wafa school's foundation, Harun Al Rasyid, remembers Andreas Asso and the boys from Wamena, and the men who brought them, Amir Lani and Aloysius Kowenip, whom he knows as "Aloy". The two men had come and "offered the students" in 2005, he recalls. "Aloy was ambitious in politics, and bringing children to my pesantren was a way to improve his standing or image in society," Al Rasyid says.
Andreas Asso's account and his differ on many points but they concur on one: the boys from the village in the wild highlands of Papua simply did not fit in. "It wasn't like a real school because in school they have classes," Andreas says. "In this one, we just went to a big mosque and all we learnt about was Islam, just reading the Koran. Sometimes they slapped us on the face, beat us with a wooden stick. They just told us we Papuans were black, we have dark skin."
They're taking our children
Really long article couldn't post the whole thing
