Sexual harassment

On Dec. 19 a sad case of sexual harassment once again occurred. One of 12 Indonesian female workers who were locked up by recruiters in Malaysia managed to escape to tell the Malaysian police authorities of the distress which she and her 11 colleagues had to suffer.

The women were reportedly locked up, forced into prostitution and forced to bear children. Four of them reportedly gave birth to babies, which their captors allegedly sold for Rp 4 million to Rp 4.5 million each.

Protests and reactions have already been coming from Bandung and Yogyakarta and from members of the House of Representatives in Jakarta. An expert of Gajah Mada University in Yogyakarta suggested that before their departure overseas the women be trained in self-defense so that they would better be able to look after themselves in the foreign land. Others suggested that the government stop the sending of female workers to other countries for the time being, and that the Malaysian authorities impose severe penalties on the offenders.

We have the impression that so far the protection of the rights of our female workers employed overseas has been very lax and that those rights have never been explained to them clearly. Most of those workers are not very educated and only a few of them have made it to secondary school level. They were moved to seek work abroad because they were jobless, were unable to finish their schooling and found it hard to acquire employment at home except as agricultural field laborers.

Recruiting agents seldom give workers, especially females, an adequate explanation of their rights. Therefore, when difficulties arise while the workers are employed abroad, few recruiting agents are willing to take any responsibility.

All this gets our attention and is discussed only after difficulties occur. We believe that the rules and guarantees of the rights of those workers should be improved and explicitly stated in their contracts of work.

-- Jayakarta, Jakarta