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Acehnese Boys: A Cry In the Dark
As a boy, I used to play in a small forest near my home in Aceh. My friends and I explored that area to find woods or small bamboo which we could use as
toys. Sometimes, in her spare time my granny brought me to a bigger forest a couple of minutes walk away from my village. She told me how to survive in
that forest. Eat everything that is eaten by birds, she said; follow the stream if you cannot find your way, etc. Obviously, I grasped all ideas
keenly and jumped around like a mule. She laughed happily looking at my behavior. Usually she would pick me up and put me at her back and we went
home. On the way home she explained everything about what was wrong and what was good to do in the forest as well as in life. Especially how to become an
Acehnese. I was so happy, and asked her a lot of questions. She answered all questions clearly. That was a very happy moment in my life. Most of Acehnese
boys in my generation had similar experience to me. We were very close to our granny and grandpa, that was the feature of Acehnese children.
Now those kind of happy moments hardly ever found in the new generation of Acehnese boys. They loss those happy moments in their childhood because they
couldn’t play around in the forest anymore. They loss not only their grandpa or granny, but also their parents. Some of them witnessed their parents
executed with cold blood. They witnessed their grandpa pulled from their grasping hand under the M-16 pointed to them. They looked at their family
killed without any cause. They saw how their neighbor stripped apart. They experienced the worst nightmare existed in the world, some even lost their
own life. They couldn’t scream, they couldn’t say anything, their mouth numb. The only thing that they can do was crying in the dark, and that was
worst enough.
Today, those children must have been grown up to become a man. All deep scars in his childhood becomes deeper every day. Those scars are the time
bombs that exist among Acehnese new generation which can explode at anytime. This generation brings their own view, and their own way of life. They bring
their worst nightmare.
The Indonesian government should take a good care on them, otherwise the government will find a lot of troubles in the future. For me the best
approach to them is using cultural and religious matters. To do so the Indonesian government should form a special body who can take care of those
children, including their education, jobs and their future. If it is successful you will find those generation can be adopted to become the main
locomotive to build new Aceh and everybody will live happily ever after. However, if the government is very reluctant to resolve this matter, I am
afraid that the new version of Aceh’s war will appear very soon. History has shown that Aceh’s wars were the longest and the most costly wars that ever
existed. Let us join our hands together to avoid those wars.
Dr. Ary (Agam) Syahriar
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