An
Indonesian family separated for a decade by the 2004 tsunami say they now want
to find their son. The couple were recently reunited with their 14-year-old
daughter Jannah, renewing hopes their son is also alive.
Deutsche Welle, 8 Aug 2014
Jamaliah (L) gives a hug to her daughter Raudhatul Jannah (C) after being reunited in Meulaboh, Aceh, northern Sumatra, Indonesia, 07 August 2014. |
The
Indonesian parents who were reunited with their daughter after 10 years apart
said on Friday thay also harbored strong hopes of tracing the long-lost son who
was carried away in the powerful tsunami of 2004.
Arif
Pratama Rangkuti was just seven years old when the tsunami washed him and his
younger sister Raudhatul Jannah away from their home in Aceh province on
December 26, 2004.
A tearful
reunion between Jannah and her parents on Thursday has sparked hopes the
family's 17-year-old son could also be found. "We are very hopeful we can
find her brother," Jannah's father Septi Rangkuti said. "We have
reported our son missing to the police so they can help us find out his
whereabouts."
New hope
Rangkuti
says he believes his son may still be somewhere on the Banyak Islands - to
which the children were washed by the powerful wave. Both Jannah and her
brother were initally taken in by a local fisherman and his family, but they
could not look after two children and decided to give the boy away.
The birth
parents said they had given up hope of ever seeing either of their children
again, until one of the youngsters' uncles noticed a girl who looked uncannily
like Jannah in a local village. After asking around he found out she had lost
her family in the tsunami, and was now living with the family who rescued her.
The
father's intial reaction was disbelief. "There's no way that's my
daughter, I thought, because it had already been 10 years," Rangkuti told
journalists. But, he added: "When we saw her, we knew, we felt the bond
right away."
Jannah's
adoptive family is also happy about the reunification,and said now she has two
families. "We are very happy they have reunited. She will always be part
of our family, and actually, we now all feel like one big family," the fisherman's
mother Sarwani said.
The
disaster, triggered by a massive earthquake, killed more than 200,000 people
across dozens of countries.
an/rc (AFP/dpa)
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