Stop transportation of West Papua's children.

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In West Papua today, religious Indonesian organizations are actively recruiting young children through false promises to their parents. After their parents, mainly vulnerable people in poorer and isolated areas, have been promised a free education and good care for their child, these children are flown to Jakarta, Java, where they are regarded as 'primitive blacks' who need 're-education'.

After their arrival in Java, the children are taken to Islamic boarding schools in Jakarta and Jakarta's vicinity (Tangerang, Cibinong, Bogor). Instead of learning mathematics and other useful lessons to help building their homeland, these children land in institutes where they are indoctrinated and turned into Islamic Indonesians. For the parents, it is impossible to ever find or even contact their children again, as the children's names are being changed and their traces erased. Children who flee from the boarding schools, have no financial means to return to their families in West Papua.

This is not a single case. The transportation of children has a long history in Indonesia. At least 4500 children were taken from East Timor during the Indonesian occupation, for 'education' in Java.

While indigenous Papuans are becoming an ethnic and religious minority in their own homeland, thousands of their children become estranged to their cultural roots under the false pretense of education, separated from their families..

These practices are against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Indonesia is a party. The Convention includes that children should not be separated from their families for whatever reason, even poverty.

Furthermore, Indonesia's own Child Protection Act includes a five-year jail penalty for those who convert a child to a religion different from their family's.

We can not close our eyes to this child transportation!

The European Parliament Human Rights Committee can bring this issue under the attention of the UN and seek clarification from the Indonesian government, in order to stop the transportation of West Papua's children and re-unite the children with their families.

For more details, read the article by Michael Bachelard:
http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/theyre-taking-our-children-20130429-2inhf.html
"They're taking our children"