“Wherever there are soldiers, there are stolen children,” said Galuh Wandita, the director of Asia Justice and Rights, or Ajar, the nonprofit that organises the reunions. It was a brutal rule marked by systematic torture, rape, starvation, killings, and thousands of child soldiers, like most of the male stolen children. Ajar, which works on accountability for mass crimes across south-east Asia, has brought a total of 57 stolen children back home. Most of the stolen children are too poor to afford a plane ticket, have largely forgotten Tetum, and have put down roots in their transplanted homes. He was renamed Untung, meaning “lucky”, by Indonesian soldiers because he was shot at three times and survived.

Source: The Guardian December 20, 2017 01:18 UTC