Word: sumedang
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...children in Hasan's compound in the village of Sumedang aren't talking, at least not when Hasan is around. Most avoid eye contact with visitors and disappear around corners in the orphanage, which consists of a small chicken run, four huts fashioned out of wood and bamboo where the children and adults sleep, an open air concrete toilet and a musholla, or prayer room. A skinny 9-year-old gathers his courage to speak: "I was named Joni by my parents, but that was when I was still an infidel. I am Zulhakim now that I'm a Muslim...
...government is doing all it can to help. But "the fact is we have other priorities that demand much more of our attention than just these children," he says. Bureaucratic inertia and a lack of funding?it costs $500 to bring a single parent from East Timor to Sumedang?all combine to hinder progress. "It's an agonizingly slow process," says Jake Moreland, a UNHCR spokesman in Dili, East Timor's capital. "And time is precious. The longer they are apart, the looser these children's links are with their parents...
...Nevertheless, a few do make it home. Two months ago, Hasan's compound in Sumedang received a visit by a team of officials from the West Java provincial authorities, the Foreign Ministry and the UNHCR. Accompanying them was Agustino Pascual, Zachariah's father, very much alive. The father hugged his boy. "He is my only son," said 56-year-old Pascual, who spent three years trying to reclaim his child. "It's just been too long. Praise the Lord, I have him back with...
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