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Enslavement
Enslavement is defined as "exercising the powers attaching to the right of ownership" over one or more persons. It includes "chattel slavery" i.e. the treatment of humans as chattel, and actions such as "control of someone's movement, control of physical environment, psychological control, measures taken to prevent or deter escape, force, threat of force or coercion, duration, assertion of exclusivity, subjection to cruel treatment and abuse, control of sexuality and forced labour."1
The Indonesian security forces were found to have committed numerous acts of enslavement, including against children. Thousands of East Timorese were used as forced labour, including several thousand children. Children used as forced labour received no salary for their services. In some cases, soldiers treated these children as if they had rights of ownership over them, passing them on to other soldiers after their tour of duty ended. This treatment was a grave breach of Geneva Convention IV, Article 147 (willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health). It was also a grave breach of Article 51 of Geneva Convention IV, which requires that an Occupying Power is obliged to pay a fair wage and ensure that the work is "proportionate to their physical and intellectual capacities".
The CAVR concluded that the enslavement of children by individual soldiers was known about at the highest levels of the Indonesian military structure2.
1The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, 12 June 2002 (Kunarac).
2Chega! Executive Summary p 127.
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