Trade in women must stop

Trafficking in women and children has not only occurred in Western Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union but also right here under our very own noses.

The police raids on a housemaid recruitment agency and a bar located near a red-light district in Jakarta this week show that serious violations of human rights, including the victimizing of under-age girls, have gone on inside the city. Such activities had previously taken place in red-light districts out of town where the police were reluctant to act.

In the raids the police found women, some of whom were naive, poorly educated girls under 17 years of age, who had come to the capital city to escape rural poverty and had dreamed of Jakarta as a city of opportunity. But instead, what they found was a kind of slavery that would rob them of a future. They would probably remain traumatized for the rest of their lives.

In the raids on a housemaid recruitment agency in Mangga Besar, Central Jakarta, and Cempaka Bar in Pejagalan, North Jakarta, police found that the two places were centers for sex slavery and prostitution.

Here in the wilderness of the urban struggle many people have stood on the wrong side of the law. Some of the housemaid recruitment agencies are a cover for trafficking and exploitation of women. The 13 girls caught in the bar, which allegedly was no less than a bordello, had been supplied by the agency, which was raided on Tuesday.

They were taken away, as they were ready to serve the sexual needs of the guests. The agency allegedly sold a virgin girl for only Rp 350,000 (about US$38), somewhere below the price of a goat in a traditional market. The agency manager told the police he had bought a virgin from a regular broker for Rp 150,000.

These brokers usually prey on women from the villages by luring them with false promises of good jobs upon their arrival at railway or bus stations. Those that have never set foot in a large city and have nowhere to go in this urban wilderness become easy targets for criminal brokers.

The trafficking and exploitation are not only taking place in the capital and other large Indonesian cities but also at crowded tourist destinations. In the island of Tanjung Balai Karimun, Riau province, about a one-hour boat journey from the Island of Galang, 562 prostitutes, who included under-age girls, according to statistics from the local government, catered to big-spending tourists from nearby Singapore.

One could reportedly buy a virgin there for between Rp 5 million and Rp 8 million, as the three young girls who had been freed from the racket there were recently quoted as saying by Kompas daily. Prospective buyers could also go to the local karaoke shows or nightclubs on this island.

On an even more gloomy note, many Indonesian women have also been exploited and smuggled to Malaysia. At least 63 percent of the streetwalkers operating in the country's capital, Kuala Lumpur, hail from Indonesia. A report of this ugly reality was read out by a Malaysian police officer at a seminar in Bangkok, Thailand, in February. The story did not, of course, make pleasant listening for the then Minister of Women's Empowerment, Khofifah Indar Parawansa, who was attending.

One of the factors that has enabled this kind of trafficking to be carried out successfully is said to be the reluctance of the police to take necessary preventive action at stations, harbors and red-light districts to save the women from this kind of exploitation. Police posts should be established at these places to help or protect needy travelers.