Calls for Justice in Extortion of Migrant Workers

Jakarta Globe, Rizky Amelia, Edi Hardum, Novianti Setuningsih & Vita A.D. Busyra, Jul 30, 2014

A returning migrant worker at Soekarno-Hatta airport, where an extortion
racket has been running for more than a decade. (Antara Photo/Noveradika)

Jakarta. Activists have demanded sterner action from the authorities against the long-running shakedown of migrant workers and foreigners at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport, following the release of 18 people arrested last weekend for roles in an alleged extortion racket.

The Corruption Eradication Commission, or KPK, which led the sting operation last Saturday, has estimated that the network of criminals, officials and military and police personnel at the airport extorts some Rp 325 billion ($28 million) a year from returning migrant workers.

“We demand to know why President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has neglected these cases for so long even though the crimes are so blatant,” Emerson Yuntho, the legal monitoring coordinator at Indonesia Corruption Watch, a nongovernmental organization, said on Wednesday.

He accused the president of constantly calling on migrant workers to increase the amount of remittances they sent back from abroad while doing little himself to end the discrimination and predatory practices they faced back in the country.

Emerson urged Yudhoyono to haul up Manpower Minister Muhaimin Iskandar and Gatot Abdullah Mansyur, the head of the Agency for the Placement and Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers, or BNP2TKI, for questioning about the officials preying on the migrant workers, and to fire them if they were found to be negligent in their oversight of the matter.

Emerson also said that the military and police chiefs should be made to answer for their men’s roles in the racket, which included forcing migrant workers to use specific taxis, which were set up to shake down the vulnerable passengers.

Two police officers and one soldier were among the 18 people arrested during the sting operation at the airport. However, police released all of the suspects on Monday, promising to follow up on the case in the mean time.

“We have to send them home, but we’ve obliged them to report to us regularly and write a statement [that they will not repeat the alleged offense],” Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Rikwanto said on Sunday.

Gen. Sutarman, the National Police chief, said on Monday that there was a possibility that the two police officers arrested in the sting could be dismissed.

“We will process their crimes and ethical violations [and look into] whether or not they are still worthy of serving as police officers,” he said.

But the release of the suspects, including 15 criminals known to have been running the extortion racket for more than 10 years, is a “huge mistake,” according to Anis Hidayah, the executive director of Migrant Care, a migrant worker rights NGO.

“What a blunder! If the Jakarta Police released all of them, then we need to be suspicious that many more police officers might be involved,” Anis told the Jakarta Globe on Wednesday.

She demanded that the investigation continue to break up what she called the long-ingrained culture of corruption and nepotism in the government’s handling of migrant workers.

“The terminal where the migrant workers pass through at the airport is under the oversight of the BNP2TKI,” Anis said.

She added that Migrant Care was working closely with the KPK to gather evidence and propose policies to break up extortion rings run by officials, agencies and civil society groups.

KPK deputy chairman KPK Bambang Widjojanto said that the extortion racket had been squeezing some Rp 325 billion out of unwitting arrivals every year for more than a decade.

“Around 360,000 migrant workers return home each year, and the thugs extort an average of Rp 2.5 million per person,” he said on Saturday. “If we estimate that 50 percent of all migrant workers are being extorted, that’s 130,000 workers times Rp 2.5 million, which is Rp 325 billion per year.”

Wahyu Susilo, a researcher at Migrant Care, said similar shakedowns were also taking place at other airports across the country, and slammed the BNP2TKI chief’s proposal for a return to the previous system whereby all migrant workers were channeled through a dedicated terminal at Soekarno-Hatta.

Wahyu pointed out that this system was abandoned in 2012 precisely because the officials running the terminal were given free rein to extort the migrant workers away from the public gaze, and that if it was revived, it would only exacerbate the problem.

The Manpower Ministry has also refuted the idea of a return to the single-terminal system.

“I think we all agree that allowing the migrant workers the choice to travel freely is a non-discriminative act, but that obliging them to travel through a specific terminal would be discriminative,” Reyna Usman, the ministry’s director general for guidance and placement of migrant workers, said on Tuesday.

He said the solution was to tighten up oversight at Soekarno-Hatta and other airports to crack down on the extortion racketeers.

“It’s embarrassing that we have so many criminals operating at the airport and that we have to consider special measures for migrant workers just because of this. The best thing, of course, is to eradicate the criminals,” Reyna said.

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KPK Swoops on Soldier, Police Officers and Gangsters Over 10-Year Extortion of Migrant Workers at Soekarno-Hatta