Child Exploitation: A horse, a bag of rice and some money - the price an Indonesian soldier paid for a seven-year-old East Timorese girl

Radio Netherlands has a disturbing article entitled Children of the enemy

A horse, a bag of rice and some money. That was the price an Indonesian soldier paid for a seven-year-old East Timorese girl called Biliki. Her parents were powerless as they watched Biliki being taken away kicking and screaming in an army helicopter. The family was being held in a military camp by the Indonesian occupying forces. The soldier, their guard, had been luring Biliki for weeks with sweets, compliments and pretty clothes.

Only recently stories of abducted children have started to emerge in East Timor, which, after a long period of colonisation by Japan, Portugal and Indonesia, celebrated ten years of independence this week.

In freshly published research, East Timor expert Helene van Klinken reveals that between 1975 and 1999 between four and five thousand children were taken from Catholic East-Timor to Islamic Indonesia.

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Child Abuse Child Exploitation Indonesia Missing Children