T

hings have changed at the orphanage managed by the Bina Remaja Mandiri Foundation since Asep and Ujang arrived three weeks ago.

The infant boys, the victims of child trafficking, have brought with them a steady stream of journalists and would-be adoptive parents to the orphanage in Depok, West Java.

Reporters came to pursue the story of the weeks-old tragic twins, who, given up for adoption by their mother amid financial hardship, ended up in the hands of an alleged child trafficker. The couples, on the other hand, wanted to adopt the boys.

Amiruddin, a social worker with the Depok Social and Manpower Agency, told The Jakarta Post over the weekend that there were at least 25 couples that wanted to adopt Asep and Ujang.

Some were from the neighborhood, he said. Others had come from as far as Medan, North Sumatra, or Singapore.

The couples chose to visit the orphanage to met with the manager Ferlian Anggraeni and her husband, Arief, in hopes that they could see the babies themselves.

Meanwhile, the orphanage has not limited visitors after an unexpected visit on a Sunday from a woman who claimed that Asep and Ujang were her children.

On March 4, Titi Nurani Manalu came to the orphange, accompanied by several reporters. The 22-year-old claimed that the babies were her sons, kidnapped soon after they were born.

“She firmly said that the babies were hers and should be returned to her. Her attitude was intimidating,” Ferlian said.

Ferlian called the Depok Police and regency social workers, asking them to escort Titi from the
orphanage.

“The orphanage has always been open to everyone, but now we just have to be more careful in receiving visits,” she added. “I don’t want the same incident to happen again.”

The real mother of the twins, Anah, works as a housekeeper in Bogor, West Java.

Anah, already a single mother of two, gave birth to the twins on Feb. 10. She had resolved to offer her unborn children for adoption, since her income as a housemaid would not be enough to raise two additional children.

MS, a 49-year-old shopkeeper, then came to Anah’s house and offered a solution, taking the twins, giving Anah Rp 1.85 million (US$201,6 million) to cover her medical fees and promising to give the boys to her relative, who would raise them.

However, instead of bringing the boys to a relative, MS allegedly attempted to sell the boys to an undercover detective party for Rp 40 million.

The police suspected that MS was part of a human trafficking ring operating in Depok, she had been under surveillance for months.

MS was arrested. She faces up to 15 years’ imprisonment if she is convicted of violating the children’s protection law and the human trafficking law.

The police turned the babies over to the Depok Social and Manpower Agency, which in turn handed them over to the Bina Remaja Mandiri Foundation. Social workers named the babies Asep and Ujang, popular names from the Sundanese language spoken in West Java.

In the orphanage, Asep and Ujang live with other 25 children in the charge of five caretakers.

Ferlian said that the twins were growing up healthy, amid limited assistance from the social agency.

The agency provided the orphanage with two boxes of formula milk, some clothes and blankets for the boys and little else. “The agency did not give us money to take care of the twins. It did not provide enough milk for the babies,” Ferlian said.

“People from the community help us more than the agency.”

Ferlian questioned the agency’s support of Depok’s ambition to be a “child-friendly” city.

“How the city can declare that it will be a child-friendly city if it does not give enough support to the orphanages?” she said.

Ferlian, who runs the foundation using private donations, said that she received additional help from several lecturers at the nearby University of Indonesia, some members of the Depok City Council, other foundations and some more established orphanages.

“I cannot feed all these kids if I only rely on the agency’s help,” she said.

Developing child-friendly cities has been an initiative of the Women’s Empowerment and Child Development Ministry, which has given such recognition to several cities, including Surakarta, Central Java.

Last year, the Depok administration said that it would strive for child-friendly status in 2012. The city council said that it would support the plan.

Critics, however have questioned Depok’s commitment following several recent crimes involving children, including the trafficking of Asep and Ujang and the case of an elementary student, reportedly the victim of domestic violence, who was stabbed a classmate in Cinere, Limo district.