Modern Day Slavery in Indonesia: Why it Prevails
sumber: google.com
The restriction of movement, coercion, exploitation, and the prohibition to change employers – these are identified by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as the elements of slavery; a human rights violation affecting around 45.8 million people worldwide. In the vessel of fishing boats, factories, brothels, private households and other places, it is estimated that over 700.000 Indonesians and foreigners in Indonesia are ensnared in trafficking, forced labor and child labor, forced marriage and early marriage, as well as the commercial sexual exploitation of adults and children.
The numbers revealed by Walk Free Foundation’s 2016 Global Slavery Index may be sufficiently shocking – however, it is highly probable that there are actually more victims, as these acts cannot be easily reported by them whether due to shame, social and economic pressure, or a lack of knowledge on ways to do so. That, combined with our nation’s prevailing issues of unemployment, insufficient job opportunities, corruption, inadequate birth registration as well as the lack of labor inspections, legal enforcement and education, serve a great hindrance in abolishing slavery.
Indonesia already has regulations created to prevent exploitation which may lead to slavery, such as regulations on minimum wage and maximum working hours. Furthermore, there are laws which criminalize slavery, such as Law No.21/2007 on the Eradication of the Criminal Act of Trafficking in Persons and Law No.13/2003 concerning manpower. However, aside lacking proper enforcement, it is no surprise that notable loopholes exist in these laws. For instance, Law Number 13/2003 only mentions the word perbudakan or ‘slavery’ once (Article 74(2)) without explaining what constitutes as slavery, therefore leaving an uncertainty on what is or isn’t punishable which can be exploited by perpetrators. Furthermore, there is a lack of both national and international regulations to protect Indonesian workers in foreign fishing vessels, and insufficient regulations for informal job sectors in Indonesia, including regulations for social protection and minimum wage. This increases the risk of more Indonesians falling into slavery.
Additionally, challenges remain in eradicating slavery due to some cultures in our nation. There are still families with mindsets to sell their daughters into prostitution or force them into early marriages to reap economic profit, and some girls give in to the latter out of disinterest from pursuing a higher education and the belief that their needs will be fulfilled by their husbands. There are also people who are not aware of their rights and the legal protection they have, albeit flawed.
But that’s not all there is to it – the rampant culture of self-centeredness is what leads one party to highly profit, while others are exploited to a life of poor conditions. It is because of this culture that some fall into corruption, while some remain in the realms of disregard for what doesn’t directly affect them, granting the space for modern slavery to continue existing. In regards to illegal fishing practices, project manager for Indonesia’s International Organization for Migration (IOM), Paul Dillon, said that “Only sustained consumer demand, that the sale of slave-caught seafood in local supermarkets and restaurant cease, is going to hold those parties (the perpetrators) accountable and turn the ship around.” The same could more or less be said for other industries – if we merely consume with no knowledge or regard on where our items come from, this may boost practices of slavery to meet the increase in consumer demands. Hence, public awareness is also necessary.
While there are some enslaved by their ‘employers’ and dire conditions, there are those enslaved by greed and ignorance – I believe the matter is not choosing between either, but rather to choose to become neither.
