120 agencies suspected of luring women into sex trade
Abdul Khalik, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
City authorities have identified another 120 labor recruitment agencies suspected of sending young women to work as sex workers overseas.
General crimes unit chief at the city police, Sr. Comr. Moh. Jaelani, said on Tuesday that his officers and officials from the Jakarta Manpower Agency were now investigating the agencies.
"We want to make sure that all of them obey the regulations so that our women migrant workers are not duped into prostitution abroad. We have many examples of how recruitment agencies lure young women and send them abroad as sex workers," he said.
The owner of a labor recruitment agency and its president director --identified as AJP and BN respectively --were arrested over the weekend for recruiting and sending 58 young Indonesian women to work as prostitutes in Tokyo and other cities in Japan.
The women, mostly in their early 20s, were told that they would work as arts and cultural representatives in Japan with a monthly salary of Rp 5 million (US$500). Upon arrival in Japan, however, the girls were forced to serve nightclub owners and Japanese men.
Two managed to escape late September and based on their accounts, Indonesian police, in close cooperation with their Japanese counterparts, rescued sixteen others early in October.
AJP, the owner of labor agency PT Mediaseni Indonesia, and BN were arrested last Saturday. Police said they would be charged under Article 297 of Criminal Code on trafficking of women, Article 378 on document forgery and Article 102 of Law No. 39/2004 on migrant workers, all of which carry a maximum punishment of 15 years in prison and a Rp 15 billion fine.
Late on Monday evening, police raided the office of PT NU, another recruitment firm on Jl. Gaharu, Jelambar, West Jakarta and rescued 153 women. They also arrested agency staffers identified as Gunawan and Charlie.
Jaelani said that PT NU had no permit from the Jakarta Manpower Agency or the tourism agency to recruit workers.
"We have closed the company's office and its training center. We are now detaining them and interrogating them intensively. It is possible that they have sent girls abroad as sex workers," he said.
At least 20 of the 153 workers have been brought to the ministry's migrant workers center in Ciracas, East Jakarta, while the remaining workers have been sent back to their hometowns in Indramayu and Subang in West Java, Purwokerto in Central Java, and Jamber in East Java.
Jaelani added that they would go door to door to check labor recruitment agencies' documents and their training and boarding centers as well as finding out to what countries they had sent the women.
He said that they had preliminary information that many agencies had duped women into prostitution abroad.
Jaelani said they would cooperate with Indonesian embassies and local police in countries such as Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Malaysia to find out where the women were employed.