Women entertainers 'at risk of being exploited'
Urip Hudiono, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
Women dancers are highly vulnerable to trafficking and becoming ensnared in the flesh trade under the pretense of being brought abroad to participate in cultural events, a tourism official says.
Being uninformed and naive, and driven by economic need, many women and girls have fallen victim to unscrupulous promoters, who recruit them from dance groups for so-called "cultural dance events" in foreign countries, the deputy minister of culture and tourism for tourism products and business development, Myra P. Gunawan, said.
"The events, however, turn out to be just covers for human trafficking and exploitation," she told a workshop involving dance groups and event promoters here on Tuesday,
Representatives from the Office of the State Minister for Women's Empowerment and non-governmental organizations, including the Legal Aid Foundation -- Indonesian Justice for Women's Association (LBH-APIK) and the Indonesian Women's Journal Foundation (YJP), also presented papers during the workshop.
The forum agreed that a lack of ethics on the part of a number of dance promoters had contributed to the women trafficking problem.
Association of Indonesian Cultural Event Organizers (ASPINDO) chairman Sjahilun Arifin referred to even more serious abuses in which foreign promoters recruited women directly from dance groups, not for their dancing skills, but rather for their physical attractiveness.
He said that ASPINDO could do nothing about this as the local organizers had normally satisfied all the administrative requirements and procedures set by the cross-sectoral monitoring commission, which comes under the coordination of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, for recruiting and sending dancers abroad.
The association also had no powers to impose sanctions on any of its members involved in such abuses, though Sjahilun said that the association had issued a code of ethics to guide its members.
"We, therefore, call for greater powers that would allow us to enforce the code of ethics," said Sjahilun.
Indri Ovtaviani from the LBH-APIK suggested that the government set up a hotline in every local office of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to help those who fell victim to the traffickers.
"Hotlines which anybody could use to seek help or report indications of cultural and tourism activities being used for women trafficking purposes would definitely be of great use," said Indri.
The NGOs also urged the government to push for the accelerated enactment into law of the women trafficking bill, which has been pending in the House of Representatives for about a year now.
In 2003, the police recorded 21 cases of women trafficking, six of which are currently being investigated. There is no specific data available, however, on how many of these cases were related to cultural events.