Julia Suryakusuma, Jakarta
Early this year I flew to Semarang. While I was waiting to check in at Soekarno-Hatta airport in Jakarta, a woman wearing a jilbab (headscarf) rushed up to me, eyes wide with anxiety.
Her name, she said, was Aminah. She had just returned from Saudia Arabia where she had worked for years as a domestic migrant worker (or TKW, as they are popularly known in Indonesia), and was about to return home to her village near Semarang.
Breathlessly, she told me she had a lot of luggage and was worried it would get lost. She added that she had not had much sleep or food on the plane and was feeling weak and dizzy.
I'm not sure why she picked me, but I think she just needed someone to lean on. So I found out which village she came from and that someone would be meeting her at Semarang. As she was not sure what to do next, and which gate to go to, I told her not to worry. ""Just follow me,"" I said. We walked together to the departure lounge and sat and chatted, surrounded by a rapidly-growing bunch of noisy TKWs, all just arrived from other countries and heading back to their families.
Aminah was in her mid thirties (but looked much older) and had three children, two in high school, one in elementary school. ""Do they live with their father?"" I asked. ""No, their grandparents. Their father is also a migrant worker, he's a driver in Malaysia"".
My God, I thought, what kind of a family life is this? Hiding my concern, I asked calmly, ""When do you all meet?"". ""Every few years"", she said in a matter-of-fact way. Her contract had been for three years, and so was his. Hmm, I thought, so much for the two-career family la rural Indonesia.
I asked Aminah about her working conditions in Saudi Arabia. She said they had been good. She lived with a nice family, who treated her well, gave her good food and taught her Arabic. But Aminah is obviously one of the luckier TKWs, and had managed to avoid the often-horrific experiences of so many, including virtual slavery, violence, sexual abuse, rape and even murder.
Aminah was fully intending to go again, after awhile. Another separation from her young family seemed inevitable. But it was clear in her mind what her options were: None.
How tragic, I thought! She's taking care of other people's kids in order to support her own, who will grow up without her. And, more tragic still, she's not unusual. So many women from impoverished villages, urban and rural, are taking this drastic step. So many families are atomized. And we're surprised that we have so many social problems?
The issue of migrant workers has been around for a long time, but the problems remain. Why? Because no fundamental changes have been made. The President spoke out recently on the plight of TKWs, and there have been some new policies, ostensibly to support them. In reality, however, they often do the opposite. Various trainings, psycho-tests, and procedures to speed up the processing of documents all have to be paid for in the end by TKWs themselves.
This is because the underlying objective of the government has little to do with TKW welfare. The aim is still the same as in the Soeharto era: cash in, by sending as many abroad as possible. The target is now 6 million TKW between 2006-2009 -- at 1.5 million per year, an increase of more than 300 percent since 2005.
Protective legislation has been a low priority, rating well below maintaining diplomatic relations, speeding up border formalities and opening lucrative business opportunities for the elite.
Aminah got lucky, but our export of TKWs is increasingly veering towards trafficking, or to put it in less euphemistic terms, the sale of women; i.e. modern slavery. If you think I'm overstating it, look at the official definition in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children.
It says ""Trafficking in persons means recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of threat, or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving and receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.
Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation by prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude...""
Sounds like a standard TKW job description to me.
There are two reasons why TKW policy is slowly institutionalizing trafficking, and both are depressing.
First, while there have been changes on the political front, the basic orientation of Indonesia's economy remains the same: the brutal, short-term exploitation of natural resources (trees, minerals, oil, women, etc.) for as much profit as possible, without creating long-term employment that might soak up some of the 45 million underemployed, boost our economy and give people real lives in their own country.
Second, many of the political elite still see women as little more than commodities. Remember this June, when one of them made his notorious statement supporting the sale of young janda (widows and divorcees) to Middle Eastern tourists to solve our employment problem? No wonder there is not much concern about what happens to TKWs overseas.
Returning from Singapore recently, I sat at the boarding lounge at Changi, once again surrounded by a group of exhausted, homeward-bound TKWs. As I wondered how many had suffered abuse and exploitation to salvage their families and our floundering nation, I couldn't help recalling Soekarno's dream that an independent Indonesia would no longer be ""a nation of coolies and a coolie among nations"".
Not yet, it seems.
The writer is the author of Sex, Power and Nation. She can be contacted at jsuryakusuma@mac.com or jskusuma@dnet.net.id.
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