Trafficking of women has long historical roots

Indraswari ,  Kuala Lumpur   |  The Jakarta Post, Thu, 09/10/2009  |  Opinion

"I never chose to be a prostitute. It just happened", said Isah, 19, describing her time in Dolly of Surabaya, one of Southeast Asia's largest commercial sex venues.

Married and divorced by 17, Isah was easy prey for traffickers, who promised her a well paid job in the city.

"After my divorce, there was no way I could return to my family. I had to escape", she said, only to find herself servicing up to eight men a night for about US$30 per day.

The above story is quoted from the IRIN website (http://www.irinnews.org), a project of the UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs.

The UN protocol to prevent, suppress and punish trafficking states that "trafficking in persons shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, or the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation".

According to the UN, between two to four million women and children are trafficked every year, 200,000-250,000 of whom are from Southeast Asia.

As for Indonesia, IRIN estimates that 80,000-100,000 Indonesian women and children are victims of sexual exploitation or have been trafficked for such purposes each year, many to Malaysia and the Middle East, while others are sent to the capital Jakarta or Kalimantan.

Poverty, lack of employment and gender inequality are the main factors behind the high numbers for trafficking of women and children.

However these are not the only reasons why human trafficking is hard to abolish as these practices have historical roots as long as three centuries ago.

An article written by Anatona titled "Perdagangan Perempuan Indonesia ke Malaysia Dalam Dokumen India Office Records" (Indonesian Women Trafficked to Malaysia as written in India Office Records) states that the practice of human trafficking has existed since the 1700s (Othman *Ed.* et. al, 2009, Setengah Abad Hubungan Indonesia Malaysia or A century old Indonesia-Malaysia relation).

The article primarily discusses the trafficking of Indonesian women to Malaysia under the Dutch and British colonial governments. At that time matters that related to the trafficking were formal and each transaction was recorded in a "receipt".

I quote one of the receipts which is written in English as follow: "Mallacca 13 November 1798: This is to certify that Naqueda Kahoel/a Malay/ has sold to Anna Nonnis/a woman a Batta slave girl named Sismina for the sum of 38 Spanish Dollars. I do hereby certify that the said Anna Nonnis has paid the above sum to Noaqueda Kahoel and that the said Naqueda Kahoel has paid the usual Duty of the Custom House" (Copy of Note 4 *R9/22/21 f.3756*)

Sismina who is mentioned in the above receipt is a Batak woman trafficked to Malaysia. The term "slave girl" indicates that she is unmarried and probably still a child.

She and others in her time were no more than just goods sold to buyers who might tell them to do whatever they want them to do including to be commercial sex workers.

Anatona quotes three other receipts which are written in Dutch. All the receipts are substantially the same in that they record the date of the transactions, the names of the sellers and buyers, the names and ethnicities of the trafficked women, the price of the women and that all the receipts include stamp duty which means that the transactions were legal.

The India Office Record documents show that in the 18th century intra and inter-state trafficking of women existed.

Now hundreds years later, more advanced technology in communication and travel has unfortunately led to even easier ways of organizing human trafficking.

Currently there are many instruments which forbid human trafficking. Indonesia has Law No. 21/2007 on the abolition of human trafficking while West Java which is one of the provinces with the highest number of trafficking cases also has bylaw (Perda) No. 3/2008 on the prevention of human trafficking and treatment of victims.

Meanwhile, as is the case of other laws, implementation remains a problem in Indonesia.

It requires a strong political will from the government to combat trafficking and an active parti-cipation from the wider society to watch the implementation of the law.

Human trafficking has to be abolished from the earth as it is one of the crimes against humanity.

The writer is an Indonesian visiting senior lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.