Republic of Indonesia

Indonesia, a vast polyglot nation, has made significant economic advances under the administration of President YUDHOYONO, but faces challenges stemming from the global financial crisis and world economic downturn.

Indonesia still struggles with poverty and unemployment, inadequate infrastructure, corruption, a complex regulatory environment, and unequal resource distribution among regions.

Economic difficulties in early 2008 centered on high global food and oil prices and their impact on Indonesia's poor and on the budget.  [The World Factbook, U.S.C.I.A. 2009]

Human trafficking and modern day slavery INDONESIA   [Extracted from U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June 2009]

Indonesia is a major source of women, children, and men trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. To a far lesser extent, it is a destination and transit country for foreign trafficking victims. The greatest threat of trafficking facing Indonesian men and women is that posed by conditions of forced labor and debt bondage in more developed Asian countries – particularly Malaysia, Singapore, and Japan -- and the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, according to IOM data. Indonesia women and girls are also trafficked to Malaysia and Singapore for forced prostitution and throughout Indonesia for both forced prostitution and forced labor. Each of Indonesia’s 33 provinces is a source and destination of human trafficking; the most significant sources areas are, in descending order: Java, West Kalimantan, Lampung, North Sumatra, South Sumatra, Banten, South Sulawesi, West Nusa Tenggara and East Nusa Tenggara, and North Sulawesi. Trafficking of young girls, mainly from West Kalimantan, to Taiwan as false brides, persists; upon arrival, many are coerced into prostitution. A new trend identified during the last year was the trafficking of dozens of Indonesian women to Iraq’s Kurdistan region for domestic servitude. Another trend was the use of abduction by traffickers, particularly in trafficking young girls to Malaysia for forced prostitution. Women from the People’s Republic of China, Thailand, and Eastern Europe are trafficked to Indonesia for commercial sexual exploitation, although the numbers are small compared with the number of Indonesians trafficked for this purpose.

A significant number of Indonesian men and women who migrate overseas each year to work in the construction, agriculture, manufacturing, service (hotels, restaurants, and bars), and domestic service sectors are subjected to conditions of forced labor or debt bondage. The destinations for such trafficking are, in descending order: Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Japan, Syria, Kuwait, Iraq, Taiwan, Thailand, Macau, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Mauritius, Yemen, Palestine, Egypt, France, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Some labor recruitment companies, known as PJTKIs, operated similarly to trafficking rings, luring both male and female workers into debt bondage, involuntary servitude, and other trafficking situations. Some workers, often women intending to migrate, became victims of trafficking during their attempt to find work abroad through licensed and unlicensed PJTKIs. These labor recruiters charge workers commission fees up to $3,000, which often require workers to incur debt to work abroad, leaving some of them vulnerable in some instances to situations of debt bondage. PJTKIs also reportedly withheld the documents of some workers, and confined them in holding centers, sometimes for periods of many months. Some PJTKIs also used threats of violence to maintain control over prospective migrant workers. Recruitment agencies routinely falsified birth dates, including for children, in order to apply for passports and migrant worker documents.

Internal trafficking remains a significant problem in Indonesia with women and children exploited in domestic servitude, commercial sexual exploitation and small factories. Traffickers, sometimes with the cooperation of school officials, began to recruit young men and women in vocational programs for forced labor in hotels in Malaysia through fraudulent “internship” opportunities. Indonesians are recruited with offers of jobs in restaurants, factories, or as domestic workers and then forced into the sex trade. A new trend noted this year was the recruitment of hundreds of girls and women for work as waitresses in extractive industry sites in Papua who were subsequently forced into prostitution. During the year, minor girls were rescued in illegal logging camps in West Kalimantan, where they were coerced into sexual servitude.