Activists warn of post-Idul Fitri human trafficking
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta, 9 Nov 2006

The post-Idul Fitri influx of migrants to Jakarta may create opportunities for internal human trafficking from rural to urban areas, experts say.
Indonesia Against Child Trafficking coordinator Emmy Lucy Smith and Arist Merdeka Sirait, the secretary-general of the National Commission for Child Protection, said poor people could be trafficked into the city in the wake of the holiday period.
With a groundbreaking bill on human trafficking still pending at the House of Representatives, desperate jobseekers continue to trickle into Jakarta to try their luck.
Fourteen young women and girls with haggard faces lugged their travel bags to a bench at the Kalideres intercity bus terminal in West Jakarta over the weekend, hoping to put the long bus ride behind them.
"I'm a newcomer here. The man escorting us promised us work. But I don't know where I'll be working, or who my boss will be. I don't even know how much I'll get paid," said one of them, a teenager who asked not to be named.
She had been recruited and transported to Jakarta by a man from her village in Lampung, along with 13 other girls ranging in ages from 13 to 20.
Another woman, Siti Rahmah, 20, said, "My family is poor, so I decided to come to Jakarta when that man offered me the chance to become a maid, even though the salary is not clear." Her 17-year-old sister also made the trip in hope of a job.
More than one quarter of the Indonesian population of 220 million lives in poverty, earning less than US$1 (Rp 9,100) a day, according to government statistics.
Saefudin, 25, the man who was herding the girls through the terminal, said they had come to Jakarta to work as domestic staff in private households.
Responding to a report on this group of young women coming in through Kalideres, Emmy said Sunday: "This is a case of human trafficking because it displays the three elements that define human trafficking: the process, the method and the purpose. And the post-holiday period is the perfect opportunity.
"Even though the women concerned have come voluntarily and are not being deceived in relation to the nature of their future occupations, if they are under 18, they are being trafficked."
According to the United Nations, trafficking in persons is the recruitment, transportation, or receipt of persons, with threat or use of coercion, abduction, deception, the abuse of power, or the giving and receiving of benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another, for the purpose of exploitation.
The figures for human trafficking have been gradually increasing each year, according to the National Commission for Child Protection. This organization estimated that in 2004 as many as 75,000 to 95,000 people were transported in the country and smuggled overseas, up over five percent from the figures for 2002.
Sirait, the secretary-general of the commission, said Monday that the bill on human trafficking was still being deliberated at the House. (06/02)