For Ida,[2]
her neighbourhood friend convinced her to sign up together, with a labour
placement agent, and get a better wage in a foreign country. Newly married and
from East Java, is radically different from working on a rural farm in Taiwan, looking
after a household, as well as being a full-time maid and companion to an
elderly person. It was a dark and dislocating experience, and life ahead looked
like a dark, unending bleakness. Her only value as a person was her work, and
when one morning when she could not get up, she was finally hospitalized and
given medical treatment, but the harassment and abuse against her continued
until she arrived at the doorstep of the Shelter Sahabat Insan.[3]
At her lowest point, Ida was discarded, and was almost
entrapped back into the circle of darkness she had just escaped. Such shattered
lives need an oasis, a safe reference point, where all this darkness can be
named, identified, and dealt with. Ida fortunately had her husband to accompany
her journey in the Shelter Sahabat Insan.[4]
There was also the local wisdom and healing hands (as well as cheery demeanor)
of Pak Yanto, who helped put her bones and muscles right again so that she
could move and sit as freely as she did before. But most of all, it is about
becoming whole again, being a person who is heard and who hears and responds
freely as well.
For Ida, this is an expensive lesson on the importance of
rights and laws, and fighting evil in defending them. And she is only perhaps
coming to realize that this is not a fight on her own, but there are others
contesting the same evils and dangers as well.[5]
This is the area of advocacy and caritative works carried out by Sahabat Insan, still in its infancy.[6]
And this is also where I come in, providing a small window that peers into that
other realm, raising one voice that can hopefully be heard by many more, giving
sight into this darkness and chaos that is currently at large in our world, our
one and whole world.
Meanwhile, I think it's important that hopelessness is does
not fester and settle in. Perhaps this can be a place to be reminded that hope
is possible, that the sun rises after a dark night. Let us not helplessly,
hopelessly, and feeling all alone, fall into an endless night instead. I
imagine a community that wants to be heard, and who hear in turn, which has
common sense, uncommon love and solidarity for the other, can offer each other
support, encouragement, and life-long learning and growth.
On behalf of Sahabat
Insan, I welcome and cherish your feedback and comments. I welcome
conversations, and hope that our hearts are open to conversion, conversion to
being more open, and more engaged with our one world. I don't plan to change
the world – a “new world” is not exactly what we need. But I do hope that
together we can significantly engage to be part of a better world.
[1] Indonesia,
though a tropical country, is drought-sensitive. Without rain, farms are shut
down, as are the lives which depend on them, for months on end. Hence migrant
workers are usually from afflicted areas in the hinterlands, forced by
circumstances into unknown shores and territories. Without a stable local
population, the local economy is in tatters except in certain urban and industrial
concentrations.
[2]
Not her real name.
[3]
After being involuntarily discharged from the hospital, Ida was held in the
premises of the Taiwanese labour agent where she had to pay for her daily board
and lodgings. After constant harassment by the Taiwanese labour placement
agent, she eventually caved in to sign false documents which try to exonerate
the labour placement agent, in order to get back her travel documents and go
back to Indonesia
for further medical treatment and recuperation. At the time of her stint in Taiwan, Indonesia had in force a moratorium
on labour placements abroad. So, any Indonesian labour which was placed
overseas to work during the moratorium is by default a victim of human
trafficking, and an illegal migrant worker. While this immediately implicates
the Indonesian labour placement agent and the agency in charge, it is almost
certain that the Taiwanese labour agent gets off scot free. But returning
migrant workers are often harassed by the Indonesian labour placement agents,
often at the government hospital bedside despite the presence of extra
security, to leave the country as soon as possible on another placement, so
that legal proceedings against them are disrupted.
[4]
Her husband was also unemployed at home in East Java, and in Jakarta found temporary work in a steel
workshop. Such insecurity of work underpins most of Indonesian poverty and is a
major part of society, and everyday is a toil on a slippery slope to keep away
from destitution on the streets.
[5]
The Indonesian labour placement agents, using an intelligence network to locate
their own placements, often resort to gangsterism (or could be gangsters
themselves) who often threaten with physical threats, lies, and other coercive
tactics. Some migrant workers succumb to the wiles of these agents and are
whisked away from their hospital beds before the end of treatment.
[6]
The Shelter Sahabat Insan has treated
23 or so persons annually, since 2008, out of 3,000 who are in such need
arriving every month at the Sukarno-Hatta
International Airport
serving Jakarta.
At the current moment, all deported illegal migrant workers who fly back have
to arrive at this airport, at a separate terminal, which makes them easy
targets for the Indonesian labour placement agents and other victimizers. Laws
and proposals are currently underway to change this undesirable situation.
