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Calling on the government to listen to the cries of children across the country, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations on Tuesday detailed horror stories ranging from religious intolerance to sexual abuse.

Speaking at a news conference in Jakarta, Ahmad Taufik Damanik, executive coordinator of the National NGO Coalition for Child Rights Monitoring, said abuses continued to occur because children’s rights issues were too often overlooked.

“In almost every planning session by the government, children’s rights issues are put aside. In every planning document, be it at the national or provincial level, children’s rights have never been considered as an indicator,” he said.

“Children should be heard and their hopes and wishes should be fulfilled by the government.”

The call comes as the government puts the finishing touches on its latest report on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which it ratified in 1990. The country is required to submit a report every five years but has so far failed to submit its third and fourth reports.

The coalition, meanwhile, on Tuesday released its own report on the implementation of the convention from 1997 to 2009. In it, a wide range of problems are detailed, including overlapping regulations and weak enforcement on issues such as health care, education and religious freedom.

In an accompanying documentary the coalition screened during the news conference, a teenage boy said he had been attacked because he belonged to Ahmadiyah, a minority Islamic sect that has often been the target of discrimination. “They kept beating me because I belong to Ahmadiyah, and nobody tried to save me,” he said.

A teenage girl, also from Ahmadiyah, said her teachers did not allow her to take the final examination for Islamic studies.

“There was no sholat [prayer] practice for the Ahmadiyah students. The teachers did not let us take the test,” she said. “They only gave us a written quiz.”

Another boy who was arrested for a minor crime said children were not treated well in prison, especially if they were from Ahmadiyah. “Everyone gets beaten up. Guilty or not, they force us to say that we are guilty,” he said.

He said police placed him in detention centers designated for adults, and that he was asked for a bribe by prosecutors during his trial. “We are poor people so how can we pay them?” he said. “They are heartless and bandits. They kept trying to prolong the legal process; if we had money, the trial would have been quick.”

The boy also said the food in jail was bad.

“It was not even good enough for animals,” he said.

The three teenagers in the film, whose identities were not disclosed to protect them, are currently in West Java and in the care of the NGO coalition, which has been working with other international groups such as ChildFund Indonesia, Plan, Save the Children, Terre de Hommes and World Vision. All the incidents discussed in the film occurred last year.

Tika, a high school student from Semarang who was at the news conference, said children were not aware of their rights.

“I think the government should promote this so that people know our rights and, most important, that we also know what our rights are,” she said.

“I just know that we have the right to participate in anything, such as in the process to draft the government report.”

According to Tika, the worst form of abuse against children is sexual abuse. “Children who are abused sexually can be infected with HIV/AIDS or other sexually transmitted diseases,” she said.

Maxie, an Ambonese boy who witnessed the violence that tore the city apart in 1999, said children in conflict areas were subject to physical abuse and violence. “We could die at any moment,” he said at the news conference.

Rudy Purboyo, a spokesman for the State Ministry for Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection, told Jakarta Globe that it was still coordinating with other ministries to complete the UN report, but added: “We would never neglect the rights of children, because that is our job.”