Are women sold cheaper then goats?

Muninggar Sri Saraswati, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Human trafficking, especially of women and children, has occurred in Indonesia for years. It is not a relic of the past. Now, with the prolonged economic crisis, it is assumed that human trading, especially for the sex industry, is on the rise. Unfortunately, many Indonesians are ignorant about it. With this special report, The Jakarta Post tries to unveil the magnitude of human trafficking in the sex industry.

A healthy goat here costs about Rp 500,000 (US$50) but a woman sold within the sex business can be priced at Rp 350,000.

That happened to Laila, who was promised a job by a man as a housemaid but was sent to a bar in North Jakarta in July, after the establishment's owner paid Rp 350,000 to the man. She was forced to work as a prostitute until she managed to escape in September.

The story shows that in this so-called civilized society, a human can be worth less than an animal. It also reveals that human trafficking is not a relic of the past.

The illicit business occurs not only in Jakarta, but also in many other places around the country. Unfortunately, most people are unaware of it.

A 2000 UN protocol defines trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons by means of threat or other forms of coercion to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.

Trafficking in persons includes human trade from one village to another town or from one island to another within a country, as well as from one country to another.

Nevertheless, victims of the crime are mostly women and children.

"In our patriarchal society, women and children do not have a strong bargaining position," an activist from the Indonesian Women's Coalition, Dian Kartika, told The Jakarta Post late last month.

Until now, there has been very little data published about the precise number of victims. However, she assumed that it reached hundreds of thousands of people around the country, while the number increased each year.

"Poverty lies at the root of the crime," Dian asserted, adding that the term "poverty" here referred not only to financial status but also to the lack of education and job opportunity.

Not surprisingly, most victims come from poor areas, particularly from remote areas along the north coast of Java, and from Kalimantan, Sumatra and West Nusa Tenggara.

Most people assume trafficking in persons involves sexual exploitation. Such a presumption is largely correct, as most victims are usually traded as prostitutes.

However, some victims are forced to perform certain tasks such as acting as drugs carriers. In the worst form, victims' organs are sold illegally to meet surgical demands.

Dian termed the crime "modern slavery", in which the criminals deployed many methods in trading humans.

Traditionally, the criminals offered their victims a job as a housemaid or as a waitress at a restaurant; they would readily accept the offer in order to contribute to their families' welfare.

Another approach was the mail order scam involving male foreigners, mostly from Taiwan or China, who came to the country to find a wife. Back in their home countries, the foreigners subsequently treated their wives as slaves, forced to do work hard, or they sold them as prostitutes.

At present, Dian said, criminals had adopted a more modern way to sell women abroad, particularly to Japan, where they were promised work as entertainers or as tourism guides.

The crime was usually committed by organized criminal networks that raked in huge profits from the business. However, the victims' parents were usually unwittingly involved in the crime too.

"I discovered that many parents (in poor areas) gave their children to other people as they were too poor," she said.

She added that the parents expected the other parties to send their children to school.

But the people, after raising and sending the children to elementary schools, felt that they could do anything with them, including selling them to middlemen for any reason, Dian added.

According to Johanna Debora Imelda, lecturer at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Indonesia, some parents ordered their daughters, aged 12 years old to 16 years old, to get married as soon as possible,

"They expected their children to support their families," Johanna said, adding that the girls had to forgo their formal education in order to get married.

Such marriages usually ended in divorce, which forced them to go back to their families, she said. The young women then had to work to support their families, despite their lack of skills.

"Criminals could then easily lure them into trafficking scams, given that the victims would be willing to take any job offered to them," she concluded.

Both Dian and Johanna urged the government to raise the level of compulsory education from elementary school to at least junior high school. They both believed that education would help the children to become more mature in making decisions about their own destiny.