JAKARTA - The Indonesian authorities have rescued 20 Indonesians who were victims of human trafficking from Myanmar’s Myawaddy district, where fighting between the army and armed resistance groups has intensified.
The Indonesian Embassy in Yangon, through its cooperation with a local network that has access to the area, managed to take the job scam victims out of the region to the Thailand border, Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday.
The evacuation was divided into two phases, with the first four Indonesians evacuated on Friday and the remaining 16 on Saturday.
“The Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok will coordinate with Thai authorities on their repatriation permits to Indonesia,” the ministry said in a statement.
There have been media reports of job scam victims from Malaysia, Taiwan and even China being held in prison-like conditions in the Myawaddy area at the Thai-Myanmar border.
The news about the human trafficking victims, who were first lured into jobs in Thailand but ended up in Myanmar, went viral after one of their family members posted videos on Instagram about their conditions in Myawaddy and pleaded for help.
“Please bring us back, Pak Jokowi,” they said in the video, referring to the Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Mr Widodo said on Thursday that the government was trying to evacuate the job scam victims from Myanmar.
They were duped and promised jobs, such as customer service officers, that would pay them between 12 million rupiah (S$1,084) and 25 million rupiah a month.
But it turned out that they were forced to work as online scammers, with long working hours up to 19 hours a day. They were fined, faced physical punishment, including getting beaten and whipped, or being sold to other companies when they failed to meet job targets set by the syndicates.
Before they were freed, they were held captive in Myawaddy, which is separated from the Thai border town of Mae Sot by the Moei River. The region is the site of clashes between Myanmar’s military and ethnic rebels from the Karen minority.
The Indonesian Embassy had sent a diplomatic note to the Myanmar government and asked for help.
The Indonesian Migrant Workers Union (SBMI), which supported the families of the victims in filing their cases to the authorities, said it appreciated the government’s efforts to free the victims. But SBMI chief Hariyanto Suwarno said the evacuation should not halt the legal process, “and it even justifies law enforcement efforts to uncover the human trafficking syndicates”.
Last week, the families of the 20 victims lodged a report to the police against the recruiters who trafficked them to Myanmar.
A cousin of a victim who identified herself only as Ms Rosa told The Straits Times: “I feel so relieved and happy. Finally, I can come to peace. My emotions went up and down, especially in the past month.”
Her cousin, a victim known by her initials N.I.S., learnt about a vacancy as a customer service officer in Thailand from a friend in late October.
The position promised her a salary from US$800 (S$1,060) to US$1,500 a month depending on her performance. Unfortunately, she was paid only in the first month of her service there.
The 37-year-old single mother of one failed to meet the target set by the third company she was sold to, and faced the threat of being sold to another company.
When the company learnt about her videos posted on Instagram, the victim, along with two male Indonesian fellow workers, was locked in a room secured by guards with long-barrelled weapons.
“She was locked up for 11 days. Her nose bled because of beating,” said Ms Rosa, who gathered the information from various sources in Myanmar.
She hopes that the recruiters can be arrested.
“It’s necessary (for the government) to set up a special task force with elements from various institutions,” she said about measures to tackle human trafficking in Indonesia.
“The task force can work on the prevention side, evacuation and management (of the victims) when they return.”
