RI looking for hostages' families<\/p>\n
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta<\/p>\n
While two Indonesian citizens are in the clutches of
\nkidnappers in Iraq, the government continued to seek their family
\nmembers. Officials said earlier they were trying to involve
\nfamily members of the women, Rosidah binti Anom and Rafikan binti
\nAming, in appealing for their release.<\/p>\n
Spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Minister Marty Natalegawa
\nsaid on Sunday said that a special team handling the hostage
\ncrisis was continuing its search for the women's family members.
\nThey also wanted to find out about travel history in the Middle
\nEast.<\/p>\n
\"We have distributed their photographs to the Middle East
\nregions surrounding Iraq. We want to find out whether these women
\nhad come to these regions before they went to Iraq,\" Marty said.<\/p>\n
As of late Sunday there was no sign of who and where the
\nfamilies of the women were, despite the fact that their pictures
\ntaken from Al Jazeera footage have been published and aired in
\nseveral print and electronic media.<\/p>\n
Clearing up the confusion over their identities, Marty said
\nthe two women had mentioned their own names, in an interview
\naired on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera television channel, which was
\nbroadcast on Friday. Marty had said the interviewer of the
\nhostages spoke to them in Indonesian \"with a heavy Arab accent\".<\/p>\n
The special team comprising officials of the ministries of
\nforeign affairs and manpower had also managed on Sunday to
\ncontact by phone a woman with a similar name to one of the
\nhostages. The woman, Rafikah binti Nasim, turned out to be safe
\nin Kuwait where she was working as a housemaid.<\/p>\n
The difficulty so far has been establishing how the women came
\nto be in Iraq, as each of the government's appointed labor supply
\nagencies stated that they had not sent the two women there.
\nRequests to send Indonesian workers to Iraq have been turned down
\nas the country is now at war, claimed Husein Alaidrus, chairman
\nof the Indonesian Labor Export Association (Apjati).<\/p>\n
He said on Saturday that they had found none of their members
\nwho had sent the above women to Iraq. He suggested that the two
\nworkers could have entered Iraq on their own initiative or could
\nhave been directly recruited by Iraqi employers from other Middle
\nEast countries because Indonesia suspended labor exports to Iraq
\neven before the U.S.-led alliance launched their offensive there.<\/p>\n
The hostage takers, naming themselves the Islamic Army in
\nIraq, have demanded that Indonesia release alleged Jamaah
\nIslamiyah leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, who in turn has angrily
\ndismissed the demands, saying that holding innocent women
\nhostages \"is a sin.\"<\/p>\n
President Megawati Soekarnoputri on Saturday appealed for the
\nhostages' release, reminding them that the Muslim fasting month
\nwas approaching.<\/p>",
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"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
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