Extortion on migrants on the increase

Evi Mariani, The Jakarta Post/Jakarta

Homeward-bound migrant workers have long been victims of robbery and extortion, but it's only recently that the Jakarta Police sounded the alarm due to the rising toll.

Sr. Comr. Oegroseno, head of operations bureau at the Jakarta Police, voiced concern about the increase in robberies targeting migrant workers.

"I haven't come up with the final data on the number of robberies targeting migrant workers this year, but there is certainly an increase in reports on such cases," he said on Friday.

He said his bureau received crime reports from police stations and analyzed crime trends.

"There is one substation in West Jakarta that has received 15 reports on robberies targeting migrant workers this year. The number is quite high for the subprecinct level," he revealed.

The first such case reported at Tamansari Police station, West Jakarta, was on Aug. 21 when a male migrant worker was found unconscious in a hotel room.

The worker later told the police that he had been picked up by men who claimed to come from the same town as he in Cilacap, Central Java, upon his arrival at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport from Taiwan.

He followed them to the hotel, where he was drugged and robbed of all his valuables, including Rp 1.7 million (US$179) in cash.

"The latest case reported at the same police substation was on Oct. 27," Oegroseno said. "When I visited the victim at Soekanto Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, he was still in a dazed state."

He said the same method was applied to the victim, who had also just arrived from Taiwan.

"Had we not scrutinized the robbery reports, we would not have known about the trend in which the workers are easy targets. The substations reported robberies to us, but they did not help us pinpoint the new trend," he added.

"Worse still, not a single robbery suspect has been named ... The detectives were probably not serious in investigating such crimes because the victims were migrant workers, who did not have strong bargaining positions."

The Jakarta Police, he said, should respond quickly to any increasing trend, and should formulate new "therapy" to tackle the problems.

"I think we need police detectives who specialize in particular crimes. For example, it would be best if we had detectives who focused on migrant worker robberies," he said.

Against the growing rate of crime, independent watchdog Police Watch released a report in July showing the police force scoring low in crime resolution.

The report stated that between July 2003 and May 2004, 20,904 reports were filed by members of the public, of which police had only solved 19.3 percent.