Word: hasan
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...thousand miles away, Hasan is sitting on a stained mattress in a wooden hut in the compound of his orphanage near the Javanese city of Bandung. He rages against the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), whose members have been working with parents to locate their offspring and arrange for their return home. Hasan says the children in his charge are now part of his family, and that UNHCR officials "have been lying about me for too long. If the UNHCR comes here, I'll hit them myself," he vows over and over, as he chain-smokes clove cigarettes...
...Hasan acknowledges, he has been informed that Pereira and his wife want their sons back. "More lies," he says. He rejects all claims made on behalf of the boys' parents, alleging that documents produced by the UNHCR to prove their case are forged. Hasan does acknowledge that initial U.N. queries about Jacinto prompted him to relocate the boy to another orphanage administered by Hasan's Lemorai Foundation. A U.N. official says they believe Jacinto was moved to the remote island of Sumbawa to complicate their efforts to secure his return. "I don't understand the game the UNHCR is playing...
...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...
...Another boy, 15-year-old Zachariah, seems to want to talk. But when Hasan is near, Zachariah lowers his eyes and tries to slip away, only to be drawn back again when a visitor produces a personal letter from East Timor addressed to Hasan, complete with photos of villagers back home. The letter prompts Hasan's wife, who is from the island, to burst into tears, but Hasan shouts at her and she retreats into a rear room. Zachariah picks up the letter. Hasan has repeatedly told the teenager?who was spirited away by Hasan's associates in 1999 without...
...Although he was raised a Catholic in an East Timor village and was originally named Roberto Freitas, the 39-year-old Hasan became a Muslim when he was still a teenager. He is not the only Indonesian running questionable shelters for East Ti-morese children. The nephew of the former Governor of East Timor, Octavio Soares, has 156 children in his charge and has clashed frequently with U.N. officials seeking their return. Critics claim people like Soares and Hasan are motivated less by altruism and their religious beliefs than by greed. Hasan uses children "as an asset or a bargaining...