Jakarta Post: “I don’t want my friends to turn away from me when I tell them who I am,” said 13-year-old Ardan, not his real name, on Saturday during a story-telling event at the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH Jakarta) office in Central Jakarta.
The boy, from an Ahmadi family, then recounted an incident when his home in Manislor village in Kuningan regency, West Java, was ransacked by locals.
“I saw people throwing stones at our house,” he said. “I asked my mother ‘what have we done wrong’ and she was just silent,” said the boy, who bowed his head and sobbed.
Ardan and two other Ahmadi children came to the LBH Jakarta office to join other children whose families were from an ethnic or religious minority group such as Sunda Wiwitan, Shia and the Rohingya Muslims, to celebrate National Children’s Day over the weekend. Also joining them were children of members of the Batak Protestant Church (HKBP) Filadelfia and the Taman Yasmin Indonesian Christian Church (GKI) congregation.
EM, a child from GKI Yasmin, took the chance to read a letter, addressed to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, in front of his new friends.
The 13-year-old boy’s words called on the President to reopen GKI Yasmin, which was sealed off by the Bogor City administration in 2011, he just wanted to celebrate Christmas this year in peace at the church.
“I want to be able to pray inside the church and not on the roadside like we have to now,” he said.