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'No sense of urgency' to help Indonesia's heroes
Indonesian migrant workers make up the majority of migrant workers in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia in particular, with hundreds of thousands of Indonesians working there
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Indonesian migrant workers make up the majority of migrant workers in the Middle East, and Saudi Arabia in particular, with hundreds of thousands of Indonesians working there.
As of April 2008, these pahlawan devisa (heroes and heroines of foreign exchange) have sent home some US$2 billion, helping relieve deep-seated worries about unemployment.
So why is the government so reluctant to speak up for the workers, mostly women from impoverished villages, exposed to abuse so far from home?
Weni binti Aceng knows why: "They think Indonesians will have absolutely nothing to eat if they don't work in Saudi Arabia."
This is why "we are treated so badly", the former migrant worker said.
Weni will not be going back, having been raped by her employer and spending a year in jail for both adultery and fleeing her workplace.
She is now dependent "on whatever amount of money my husband brings home". She walks with a limp, having jumped from the third floor of her employer's home, and is grateful her husband accepts her child born out of rape.
"He is my flesh and blood, I could never give him up," she said.
A nurse and a police officer had both offered to adopt the boy, but were turned down. Now two-years-old, the infant born in Al Malash prison plays with other mixed race children who have been accepted in their village in Karawang, West Java.
Testifying last month in a mock tribunal held by the Women's Solidarity NGO, she wore the customary black abaya, the same gown in which she said she was lashed 200 times for her crimes. The penalty was carried out 50 lashes at a time.
Saudi Ambassador for Indonesia Mohammed Amen Al Khayyat said Weni's case was among the "small individual cases", with the majority of migrant workers reporting no such problems.
Saudi labor minister Ghazi al-Qusaibi said new migrant workers in Saudi Arabia would benefit from the "radical reforms" made recently. He told Human Rights Watch reform plans included ending the kafalah sponsorship system, which prevented workers leaving their employers for other jobs. Under this system, workers needed their employers' permission to end the contract and return home.
Researcher Nisha Varia and HRW executive director Kenneth Roth presented their latest study on migrant workers in Jakarta in early July, in a discussion hosted by the National Commission for Violence against Women.
They reiterated their astonishment that interviews with Indonesian officials in Saudi Arabia and in Jakarta revealed barely any "sense of urgency".
Despite the fact Indonesia feels it is not in a position to bargain, countries such as Saudi Arabia are actually highly dependent on Indonesian migrant caregivers, construction workers and so forth, Varia said.
Foreign Ministry officials said their diplomats were confined by "consular and diplomatic" limitations. They also admitted staff at the Indonesian embassy and consuls in Saudi Arabia were overwhelmed, but said if more diplomats were sent to the kingdom, then Saudi Arabia would also have to be allowed to send the more diplomats to Indonesia.
"So what?" Roth said.
The ministry said embassy and consul officials heard an average of 15 new complaints each day, with only one labor attach* at the embassy for the hundreds of thousands of Indonesian workers.
However, the Saudi government has given positive signs, allowing HRW to conduct a study on Asian domestic workers in the kingdom, Varia told The Jakarta Post.
Varia was granted almost all necessary interviews and visits with officials and migrant workers, even though the approval was three years in the granting.
The study enabled Varia to note the glaring differences between the migrant shelters run by the Philippine and Indonesian embassies.
Varia said the Philippine shelter was comfortable, while the one at the Indonesian embassy was "overcrowded, full of cockroaches and rats, it leaks and smells".
HRW concluded the Philippine government was sincerely concerned for its citizens, "consular and diplomatic" limitations notwithstanding.
The rights group urged the Indonesian government to raise the issue of migrant worker abuse at international meetings and forums.
These are the most crucial means of overcoming the chronic problem, said Varia. Bilateral agreements between Indonesia and the countries hosting the workers has also been largely negligent of protection for the workers.
"It's easy to blame the countries hosting the workers," lawmaker Tuti Lukman said.
"But those countries can then argue Indonesians themselves do not provide formal recognition and protection for their own domestic workers."
Tuti said the root of Indonesia's complacency and lack of concern was in its attitude to the workers: that they were just maids, among the lowest people in society.
Migrant workers earn much more abroad than they would in Indonesia, but back home, in a society that puts little value on women's rights or workers' rights, they are still just lowly maids.
This, then, is the source of the culture shock for Weni and thousands like her. They left their families to pursue lucrative, promising jobs, only to find themselves trapped alone in an alien environment with an eerily similar mind-set -- that maids are private property.
