Indonesian girls 'sold' by parents to work in Malaysia

Indonesian girls 'sold' by parents to work in Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP): Indonesian teenage girls are being "sold" by impoverished parents and brought to neighboring Malaysia on forged passports to work illegally, a report said Monday.

The girls, normally aged 15 or 16, are brought into Malaysia's eastern state of Sarawak and other states where they are forced into "all types of work including prostitution," the Berita Harian daily said.

The paper quoted Hairiah, the head of an Indonesian organization called the Foundation for Justice and Help for Indonesian Women, as its source.

"Indonesian agents buy the girls from parents in desperate need of money and sell them to their local (Malaysian) counterparts," she was quoted as saying in Sarawak.

Hairiah said the girls would be brought into Malaysia on false passports and "are not paid anything for their work they do."

She said many were employed as maids but were often abused by their employers, forcing them to seek refuge at the Indonesian consulate in the Sarawak capital of Kuching.

Hairiah said one girl who ran away from their employer was aged only 11.

"Because of their tender age many girls are easily fooled by the agents who bring them to Malaysia," she said.

"When the girls become homesick and want to go back, the recruitment agents will threaten to force them into prostitution," she was quoted as saying.

The organization carries out education programs for women on their rights as workers in foreign countries.

Malaysian media recently gave wide coverage to the case of an Indonesian maid who suffered serious head injuries in an attack blamed on her employer's wife.

It was the latest in a series of attacks on Indonesian maids which has prompted a shocked reaction in Malaysia. The wife has been charged.

There are more than 150,000 foreign maids in the country, including many Indonesians working in Malaysia.