Immigration set to deport Chinese prostitute

JAKARTA (JP): The authorities are currently investigating how a Chinese woman, who has been working as a prostitute in Indonesia, managed to obtain a forged Indonesian passport and has been traveling in and out of the country for the last three years undetected.

The woman, identified as Huang Chuang Shia, is currently under investigation and may face deportation, Hario Subayu, spokesman of the Directorate General of Immigration, said yesterday.

Huang, 22, was captured recently at the Soekarno-Hatta airport as she was about to board a plane for Batam island, Hario said, adding that she had been working at a karaoke club in West Jakarta, selling sex services for US$500-$1,000.

Despite having been in the country for three years, she does not speak the Indonesian language, he added.

Preliminary investigation showed that Huang, who is originally from Sanghai, first came to Indonesia in 1991 and immediately obtained an Indonesian passport, using the assumed name of Seani Yanti, with a home address in Purwokerto, Central Java.

She obtained the passport, issued by the immigration office at Cilacap, Central Java, from a syndicate that also involved local officials of Purwokerto.

She told the investigators that she had hoped to move to Japan, which would not have been possible with her Chinese passport. She also confessed that she had visited Hong Kong and China several times using her Indonesian passport.

Hario said the immigration authorities last Saturday deported another Chinese woman who was also believed to have been working as a prostitute at the same karaoke club in West Jakarta.

Zhang, 26, has traveled in and out of Indonesia six times under social-cultural visa. She was apprehended at a five-star hotel in Central Jakarta, he said. (05)