Human Trafficking in [Indonesia Street Children in [Indonesia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Indonesia] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery Republic
of Indonesia [ Country-by-Country
Reports ] The Indonesia is a source, transit, and
destination country for women, children, and men trafficked for the purposes
of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. The greatest threat of
trafficking facing Indonesian men and women is that posed by conditions of
forced labor and debt bondage in more developed Asian countries and the
Middle East. The government stopped permitting Indonesian women to travel to
Japan and South Korea as “cultural performers,” to curtail a practice that
led to victims being trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. However,
in 2007 traffickers increasingly used false documents, including passports,
to obtain tourist visas for women and girls who are subsequently forced into
prostitution in Japan, through the unlawful exploitation of recruitment debts
as high as $20,000 each. Trafficking of young girls to Taiwan as brides,
mainly from West Kalimantan, persisted. Traffickers use false marriage
licenses and other false documentation in order to obtain visas and
subsequently force the women and girls into prostitution. Women from the
People’s Republic of China, Thailand, and Eastern Europe are trafficked to
Indonesia for commercial sexual exploitation, although the numbers are small
compared with the number of Indonesians trafficked for this purpose. A
significant number of Indonesian men and women who migrate overseas each year
to work in the construction, agriculture, manufacturing, and domestic service
sectors are subjected to conditions of forced labor or debt bondage in
Malaysia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, United
Arab Emirates, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Syria, France, Belgium, Germany, and
the Netherlands. Malaysia and Saudi Arabia are the top destinations for legal
and illegal Indonesian migrant workers who are trafficked for domestic
servitude, commercial sexual exploitation, and forced labor. Some labor
recruitment companies, known as PJTKIs, operated similarly to trafficking
rings, luring both male and female workers into debt bondage, involuntary
servitude, and other trafficking situations. Some workers, often women intending
to migrate, entered trafficking and trafficking-like situations during their
attempt to find work abroad through licensed and unlicensed PJTKIs. These
labor recruiters charged workers high commission fees—up to $3,000—which are
not regulated under Indonesian law and often require workers to incur debt to
pay, leaving them vulnerable in some instances to situations of debt bondage.
PJTKIs also reportedly withheld the documents of some workers, and confined
them in holding centers, sometimes for periods of many months. Some PJTKIs
also used threats of violence to maintain control over prospective migrant
workers. Recruitment agencies routinely falsified birth dates, including for
children, in order to apply for passports and migrant worker documents. Internal
trafficking is a significant problem in Indonesia with women and children
exploited in domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation, rural
agriculture, mining, fishing, and cottage industries. Women and girls are
trafficked into commercial sexual exploitation in Malaysia, Singapore, and
throughout Indonesia. Indonesians are recruited with offers of jobs in
restaurants, factories, or as domestics and then forced into the sex trade.
Young women and girls are trafficked throughout Indonesia and via the Riau
Islands, Kalimantan, and Sulawesi to Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysians and
Singaporeans constitute the largest number of sex tourists, and the Riau
Islands and surrounding areas operate a “prostitution economy,” according to
local officials. Sex tourism is rampant in most urban areas and tourist
destinations. A 2006 bilateral MOU between the Indonesian and Malaysian
governments, governing the employment of an estimated one million Indonesian
domestic workers in Malaysia, failed to provide adequate protection to
Indonesian migrant workers and explicitly endorsed a practice that is widely
seen as a potential facilitator of forced labor—the right of Malaysian
employers to hold the passports of Indonesian workers. This agreement has not
been amended to offer protections from forced labor conditions. - U.S. State
Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2008 [full
country report] |
|
CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Human
Trafficking, Migrant Labor Often Linked in Indonesia More than 2.5 million Indonesians
from poorer regions support their families every year by traveling overseas
seeking work as domestic servants and laborers. Most work in Malaysia and
Saudi Arabia, but hundreds of thousands of others also can be found in
Singapore, Japan, Syria, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Some of these individuals find
work through officially sanctioned recruiting agencies. But Susilo estimates
that more than half of would-be migrant workers bypass these programs for the
deceptive ease of working through less reputable recruiters who, like
traffickers the world over, confiscate passports, trap would-be workers with
exorbitant loans to travel abroad and force them into laboring in dangerous
and abusive work environments in a futile effort to repay their unmanageable
debts before sending money home to their families. Indonesia's
Footwear Workers Too Thin For Aerobics Suyatmi, a shy, 20-year old
factory worker, is too poor to know much about sneakers. She's never heard of
Bo Jackson and is too skinny to care about aerobics.
Her world consists of a rented, 5-foot sqaure
room in a shantytown where she sits on the concrete floor with three other
young women. Every day a t 7 a.m., Suyatmi
begins work at P.T. Hardaya Aneka Shoes Industry, one of six companies in
Indonesia making shoes for Nike Inc., the spectacurly successful U.S.
sporting goods company. Her production "line" of 30 workers
produces 350 pairs of Nike's glitzy footwear a day. Suyatmi
and her co-workers earn a base salary of 1,900 Indonesian rupiahs a day, the
equivalent of $1.15. Working a six-day week, with a least two hours of
overtime each day, she takes home about $17 per week. The company also gives
her lunch and a bus ride to work. "Some
days it's hard," she said. "But I'm just happy to have a job." ***
ARCHIVES *** Quick Search for Missing Children
- Select Gender, Country ( U.S.
Dept of Labor Bureau of International Labor Affairs INCIDENCE
AND NATURE OF CHILD LABOR - The December 26 tsunami left
thousands of children in Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 TRAFFICKING
IN PERSONS – The
Singkawang District of West Kalimantan remained well known as an area from
which poor, ethnic Chinese women and teenage girls between the ages of 14 and
20 were recruited as "mail order" brides for men, primarily in In many cases traffickers
recruited girls and women under false pretenses. One tactic was to offer young
women in rural areas jobs as waitresses or hotel employees in distant
regions, including island resorts. After the new recruits arrived and
incurred debts to their recruiters, they learned that they had been hired as
prostitutes. In October Many victims became vulnerable to
trafficking during the process of becoming migrant workers. Many unauthorized
recruiting agents operated throughout the country and were involved in
trafficking to various degrees, and some government-licensed recruiting
agents also were implicated in trafficking. Recruiting agents often charged
exorbitant fees leading to debt bondage and recruited persons to work
illegally overseas, which increased the workers' vulnerability to trafficking
and other abuses Concluding
Observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) - 2004 [51] The Committee is concerned
that the current adoption legislation discriminates between groups of
different ethnic origins, does not provide sufficient safeguards against
abusive practices, including trafficking of children, and does not take
sufficiently into account the principle of the best interest of the child. [87] The Committee welcomes the
endorsement by the State party of relevant international and regional
agreements such as the Regional Commitment and Action Plan of the [88] The Committee is nonetheless
concerned at the lack of awareness in the State party on this phenomenon, at
the insufficient legal protection for victims of trafficking, and that few
measures have been taken to prevent and protect children from sale,
trafficking and abduction. Church
slams daily human trafficking and authorities’ complicity Migrant women abducted by criminal
gangs, drugged and then put to work in prostitution rings under false
identities, often with complicity of corrupt local officials and police officers
is but one typical aspect of human trafficking in Indonesia. Human
Trafficking, Migrant Labor Often Linked in Indonesia More than 2.5 million Indonesians
from poorer regions support their families every year by traveling overseas
seeking work as domestic servants and laborers. Most work in Malaysia and
Saudi Arabia, but hundreds of thousands of others also can be found in
Singapore, Japan, Syria, Kuwait, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Some of these individuals find
work through officially sanctioned recruiting agencies. But Susilo estimates
that more than half of would-be migrant workers bypass these programs for the
deceptive ease of working through less reputable recruiters who, like
traffickers the world over, confiscate passports, trap would-be workers with
exorbitant loans to travel abroad and force them into laboring in dangerous
and abusive work environments in a futile effort to repay their unmanageable
debts before sending money home to their families. Indonesian
Police Arrest 15 For Alleged Human Trafficking Indonesian police have arrested 15
people for alleged trafficking of women and girls to Malaysia who eventually
ended up in the flesh trade and at nightspots. Its security and transnational crime
vice-director, Bachtiar Hasanudin Tambunan, said the victims, mostly from
West Java, were promised restaurant jobs with large salaries before finding
themselves working in cafes, discotheques and brothels. Human
Trafficking Rate in Indonesia Still High The commitment of the Indonesian
government in handling human trafficking is still considered to be low. This can be seen from the amount of human
trafficking victims that keep increasing every year. Child
trafficking on rise in Indonesia Indonesian authorities are
battling a growing trade in child trafficking, including a recent case where
hundreds of babies were sold overseas, a report says. The report, by the Indonesian Ministry of
Women Empowerment, found that efforts to retrieve the children in baby
trafficking cases were flawed. The report said one woman was
caught in South Jakarta last year after having sold 880 babies abroad. A
further 25 babies were saved. Disasters
Increase Risk of Human Trafficking The crimes are many forms:
distribution of 880 babies from North Sumatra to Singapore by a foundation,
for instance. The babies, she
explained, were re-sold when they arrived in Singapore. If they were caught in action at sea, the
babies were often thrown out of board so as to wipe the evidence. US
Official Urges Indonesia to Crack Down on Human Trafficking On Saturday, at a crisis center in
Jakarta run by the International Organization for Migration, Miller met with
dozens of Indonesians who were forced to work in neighboring Malaysia. He
also spoke to reporters. "They
tell of agents here deceiving them, of employers over there working them 15,
18 hours a day, of being beaten, of having their stomachs stomped on. This is
something we must all work together to stop," he said. Miller says Indonesians are particularly
vulnerable to human traffickers because of the country's poverty, widespread
slavery rings, and lack of law enforcement due to corruption. Bangka Belitung fertile ground for human
trafficking Bangka Belitung
province is a fertile ground for the operations of human trafficking
syndicates as the world`s biggest tin producing region is also full of
ecoomic activities facilitating their illegal practices, a local women rights
protection activist said. "People
from different areas in Indonesia who fell victims of human trafficking were
initially offered good jobs with good salaries but in the end they were
forced into prostitution in pubs or red-light districts," woman rights`
protection activist Radmidha Dawam said here Monday. Govt
still weak in protecting women from human trafficking The Indonesian government is still
weak in preparing and implementing laws against human trafficking which has
been harming women, Executive Director of the Centre for Development of
Female Resources (PPSW) Endang Sulfiana, said here Wednesday. The victims, aged 14 to 17, were
promised jobs in Jakarta as domestic workers, but were then flown to West
Kalimantan province on the Indonesian side of Borneo and taken across the
border into Malaysia, sometimes using false travel documents. Microsoft
Partners with Asian NGOs to Help in Fight Against Human Trafficking Microsoft Corp. has awarded over $US 1 million through its Unlimited Potential grants to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across six Asian countries. The latest round of grants will deliver IT training courses specifically for people in human-trafficking hot spots across the region - often women and children. Human trafficking has been described as "the emerging human rights issue of the 21st century" by the US State Department. The Unlimited Potential grants to help combat human trafficking were distributed in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand and will deliver IT skills through training that enhance the employment prospects and economic conditions of people most vulnerable to, or already victimised by, human traffickers. Guest
Worker May Lose Digits, Toes After Being Tied Up in Bathroom for a Month A 25 year-old Indonesian guest worker will have several
of her fingers, toes and part of her right foot amputated because of gangrene
after being tied up for a month in a bathroom by her Saudi sponsor. The Indonesian Embassy noted that 2,000
housemaids have been repatriated to Sex Trafficking Growing in S.E. Asia Girls from the villages of Myanmar, Cambodia, Indonesia
and the Philippines are lured into cities or neighboring countries with
promises of lucrative jobs as waitresses and domestic helpers, only to end up
in massage parlors and karaoke bars.
Others are flown as far as Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Free Human Rights Overview by Human
Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study Indonesia
moves to preempt child trafficking after tsunami as UNICEF issues
exploitation warning The government of Indonesia,
concerned over reports of human trafficking in children in the wake of last
week's tsunami disaster off the west coast of the country that killed over
100,000 and left other hundreds of thousands homeless, has now placed
restrictions on the transport of youngsters out of the country and has
brought special guards into refugee camps, directing local police commanders
to be on watch against abduction or other exploitation of children. Tsunami
orphans available for the right price Volunteers from the Muslim-based
Justice and Prosperity Party (PKS) claim that "human lives" are
being bought and sold in some of the refugee camps in North Sumatra's
provincial capital of Medan. Unidentified
individuals have seemingly tried to buy tsunami-orphaned children or children
whose parents are missing in order to resell them. Confirmed
Child Trafficking in Indonesia "An NGO has reported seven
trafficking cases in Indonesia," Richard Danziger, head of IOM's
counter-trafficking unit, told Reuters. He declined to name the agency. US
issues guidelines to prevent human trafficking in tsunami-hit Asia The US State Department said
Wednesday it was issuing guidelines to officials and volunteers in
tsunami-hit Asia to prevent human trafficking which has become a serious
problem. The move came amid reports
that thousands of vulnerable children orphaned by the disaster face the risk
of being picked up by gangs of unscrupulous human traffickers. "I think that there are sufficient,
credible reports for us to conclude that this is a real danger and that
decisive action must be taken now to prevent abuse," State Department
spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters. Call
for legal reforms to protect children in Indonesia The report highlights concerns
about inconsistencies and gaps in the law, especially with regard to the
treatment and protection of children. For example, prostitution is one of the
main forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children in Indonesia. But
the law does not provide for children who are sexually exploited in the
streets and brothels to be treated as victims of a crime. Instead, they are
more likely to be treated as criminals. This is because the Criminal Code
contains no provisions relating to commercial sexual transactions with a
child even as it allows for punishment of children forced into street
prostitution, either for offences against public order or as vagrants. Meanwhile, people who pay for sex with a
child and those who facilitate this action commonly escape punishment due to
the lack of explicit laws targeting people who buy sex with children and weak
enforcement of existing laws on pimping. This study finds that in
Indonesia, general awareness and understanding of the grave nature of sexual crimes
against children is low. Accordingly, Indonesian laws and legal procedures
fail to protect children sufficiently from commercial sexual exploitation and
are not in compliance with international standards, such as the United
Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and other international
instruments. It is not something any government
likes to make public, but the figures say it all: Indonesia is one of the
world's largest exporters of sex workers, mainly children. The UNICEF says as many as 70,000
Indonesian children have been sold across the country's borders as sex
commodities. They are employed in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand,
Japan, Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Similarly, nearly half of the 400,000 estimated sex workers in
Indonesia are children under 18 years old. UNICEF
Urges Action On Child Trafficking The United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) has called on Indonesia to follow Thailand, Cambodia and the
Philippines in taking strong measures to combat child trafficking for sexual
exploitation. Help
Wanted: Abuses against Female Migrant Domestic Workers in Indonesia and
Malaysia I. SUMMARY - The agent came to my house and
promised me a job in a house in Malaysia… He promised to send me to Malaysia
in one month, but [kept me locked in] the labor recruiter’s office for six
months…. I think one or two hundred people were there. The
gate was locked. I wanted to go back home. There were two or four
guards, they carried big sticks. They would just yell. They would
sexually harass the women. — Interview with Fatma Haryono, age thirty, returned domestic worker,
Lombok, Indonesia, January 24, 2004 I worked for five people, the
children were grown up. I cleaned the house, the kitchen, washed the
floor, ironed, vacuumed, and cleaned the car. I worked from 5:00 a.m.
to 2:00 a.m. every day. I never had a break; I was just stealing time
to get a break. I was paid just one time, 200 ringgit [U.S.$52.63].
I just ate bread, there was no rice [for me]. I was hungry. I
slept in the kitchen on a mat. I was not allowed outside of the house. ─ Interview with Nyatun
Wulandari, age twenty-three, returned domestic worker, Lombok, Indonesia,
January 25, 2004. In Indonesia, prospective migrant
workers secure employment in Malaysia through both licensed and unlicensed
labor agents who often extort money, falsify travel documents, and mislead
women and girls about their work arrangements. In both Indonesian
training centers and in Malaysian workplaces, women migrant domestic workers
often suffer severe restrictions on their freedom of movement; psychological
and physical abuse, including sexual abuse; and prohibitions on practicing
their religion. Pervasive labor rights abuses in the workplace include
extremely long hours of work without overtime pay, no rest days, and
incomplete and irregular payment of wages. In some cases, deceived
about the conditions and type of work, confined at the workplace, and
receiving no salary at all, women are caught in situations of trafficking and
forced labor INDONESIA:
Indonesian military, police accused of human trafficking There are claims that the
Indonesian military and police have been extorting bribes from Acehnese
asylum seekers and selling them into slavery. The claims have been backed by
refugee advocates working closely with the UN refugee agency in Malaysia,
where thousands of Acehnese are facing expulsion under a government crackdown
on illegal workers. Fighting
sexual exploitation and trafficking in Indonesia Yani was 15 when her boyfriend
lured her away from home with false promises of a lucrative job and a chance
to continue her education. After a long journey by car to an unknown
destination, she was raped by a middle-aged Indonesian man who beat her
unconscious after she refused his advances. She was immediately sold to a
brothel where she was guarded day and night. Indonesia to
Intensify Battle vs Human Trafficking An estimated 230,000 Indonesian
women and children have been trafficked from their home villages in Java,
Sumatra, West Nusa Tenggara and Sulawesi to be employed as sex workers and
cheap labor in urban areas at home and the sex trade overseas. The government has recently brought home
more than 300 women who were employed as sex workers in Saudi Arabia and
Malaysia. Forced
labour and exploitation of Indonesian migrant workers Since the early 1980s, poverty,
high unemployment and lack of educational opportunities have been driving
Indonesian migrants abroad in search of work, and by the late 1990s, they
were among the fastest-growing migrant population in Asia. By mid-2001, over
70 per cent of Indonesian migrants were women, and 43 per cent worked in the
informal employment sector as domestic workers, factory workers or
construction workers. 1 Most of these workers, considered low-status or
"unskilled," must endure highly-exploitative or abusive treatment,
and many work in conditions which meet the International Labour
Organization's (ILO) definition of forced labour as set out in Convention
No.29. Slavery
continues to plague Indonesian migrant workers How tragic and terrible has been
the violence against a great number of Indonesian women employed overseas
this year! Not only were they harassed, physically abused or even raped but
were also sent home without proper payment or traded from one employer to
another. Many women workers who had just
arrived home from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Malaysia and Singapore said how they
were insulted and beaten if they made mistakes in performing their daily tasks,
how they had to work overtime without extra pay, how they were sexually
harassed or raped by their male employers or their relatives and how they
were physically attacked by their female employers after they had been forced to have sex
with their male employers. Behind "the success
story" of most migrant workers, many have to endure brutality and
undergo a form of slavery to gain 600 riyal per month in Saudi Arabia, or 300
ringgit in Malaysia. ILO
Cites Child Labour, Forced Prostitution in Indonesia Children as young as 13 are
involved in the drug trade in Jakarta, according to a survey of the five
worst forms of child labour in Indonesia released today by the International Labour
Organization. Reporting on various parts of Indonesia, the ILO cited
trafficking of children for prostitution on Java and child labour in offshore
fishing in North Sumatra, gold mining in East Kalimantan and the shoe
industry in West Java. According to the survey, children in the country enter
the commercial sex market at between 15 and 17 years of age, sometimes with
the support of parents and other relatives. Although the survey does not
contain figures, an ILO report released last month reportedly indicated that
more than 10,000 children under 18 years of age are prostitutes in five major
cities in Indonesia. Children who work in the shoe industry in West Java are
often exposed to hazardous substances such as glue and leather dust and
usually "work long hours in cramped, dusty workshops," the ILO
said. Other children work long hours in dangerous conditions in offshore
fishing and in gold mines, where they are "exposed to multiple hazards,
such as cave-ins, (becoming) trapped in underground mines, exposure to dust
and chemicals," reads the survey. WOMEN RESCUED FROM SEX RING - Malaysian police and the staff
of the Indonesian consulate have rescued 13 Indonesian women allegedly forced
into the sex trade in the interior Keningau district. The rescue came a week
after two of them escaped from the hotel. The women, aged between 14
and 24, were sent back to Indonesia through Tawau. The Keningau police
are reportedly questioning the alleged pimp and three of his assistants. Trafficking
of Women and Children in Indonesia This
300-page report was published as part of a joint Solidarity Center/
International Catholic Migration Committee countertrafficking campaign in
Indonesia, where hundreds of thousands of young girls are lured away from
their homes each year under false pretenses, sold into bondage, physically
and sexually abused, sent out into the streets as beggars, or worse. Indonesia’s
President Wahid joins ILO Battle Against Child Labour Indonesia becomes first Asian
country to ratify the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention and the first to
ratify all eight core labour standards. Indonesia:
Children held in slavery Investigators believe the children
- aged between 6 and 17 - are among up to 1,000 separated from their parents
at the height of violence in East Timor last year and later from refugee
camps in West Timor. Investigators fear many of the children have been forced
to work in factory sweatshops, plantations or as prostitutes. Child
Labour on Indonesian Fishing Platforms The Indonesian NGO, KKSP
Foundation and Anti-Slavery International have long been concerned about the
use of children on hundreds of rickety fishing platforms, known locally as
jermals, in the seas off the northeast coast of Sumatra. Apart from a supply
boat that comes every two weeks, there is no contact with the shore. Each
jermal is likely to have three or four children on it who haul in and mend
the nets as well as boil, dry and sort the fish. The children stay for a
minimum of three months and are not free to leave. In this time the children
obviously cannot see their families or go to school. Children can fall or be carried
off by large waves during storms and there are no life jackets on the
platforms. The children suffer from fatigue because of the very long hours
they work and interrupted sleep patterns. In such a state it is easy to lose
concentration and fall from the platform or let a hand slip from the winch. Indonesia's
Footwear Workers Too Thin For Aerobics Suyatmi, a shy, 20-year old
factory worker, is too poor to know much about sneakers. She's never heard of
Bo Jackson and is too skinny to care about aerobics.
Her world consists of a rented, 5-foot sqaure
room in a shantytown where she sits on the concrete floor with three other
young women. Every day a t 7 a.m., Suyatmi
begins work at P.T. Hardaya Aneka Shoes Industry, one of six companies in
Indonesia making shoes for Nike Inc., the spectacurly successful U.S.
sporting goods company. Her production "line" of 30 workers
produces 350 pairs of Nike's glitzy footwear a day.
Suyatmi and her co-workers earn a base salary
of 1,900 Indonesian rupiahs a day, the equivalent of $1.15. Working a six-day
week, with a least two hours of overtime each day, she takes home about $17
per week. The company also gives her lunch and a bus ride to work.
"Some days it's hard," she said.
"But I'm just happy to have a job." All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107 for noncommercial,
nonprofit, and educational use |
Human Trafficking in [Indonesia Street Children in [Indonesia] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Indonesia] [other countries]