Indonesia lags in dealing with trafficking
Tama Salim and Fedina S. Sundaryani, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Headlines | Wed, July 29 2015, 4:43 PM

Despite continued efforts to crack down on human trafficking in the country, a recent study has found that weak law enforcement still prevents Indonesia from making headway in the implementation of its national anti-trafficking strategy.

On Monday the US State Department published the 2015 Trafficking In Persons Report, which highlighted the country’s inconsistent attempts to address human trafficking.

For example, the report revealed that, although the government prosecuted 134 suspected traffickers and convicted 79 in 2014, more than 200 trafficking investigations opened by the National Police were stopped without further prosecution.

“The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) reported the prosecution of 134 defendants, an increase from 126 in 2013. The AGO reported 79 convictions in 2014 — a decrease from 118 convictions in 2013,” the report states.

The report also pointed out that “a lack of familiarity with the anti-trafficking law’s provisions [had] led some prosecutors and judges to decline cases or use other laws to prosecute traffickers”.

Additionally, the annual study highlighted how inadequate coordination across government agencies and officials’ lack of knowledge of trafficking indicators and legislation had impaired the nation’s anti-trafficking efforts.

Separately, head of the National Police’s human trafficking unit under the detective division, Adj. Sr. Comr. Arie Dharmanto blasted the report saying that the US State Department exaggerated the severity of human trafficking problems, and insisted the rate of trafficking had continued to decline.

Arie told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that investigations into 190 out of 312 human trafficking cases had been completed and were handed over to the AGO in 2014.

“You have to understand that the number of cases each year is not the total number of cases reported that year. Some unfinished cases are carried over to the following year,” Arie said.

According to police data, investigators have completed 430 out of 861 cases from 2012 to May this year.

“That means we have a success rate of around 50 percent,” Arie said.

However, he acknowledged that human trafficking cases were often difficult to complete because victims were often reluctant to talk to the police once their cases were reported.

Furthermore, most of the cases occurred in remote areas where police officers were not well trained on how to handle and investigate human trafficking cases.

“For the past two years we’ve seen significant improvement in how the cases are investigated at the National Police headquarters and other provincial police stations. However, the same cannot be said about police at the precinct level,” he said.

“This is a shame because traffickers often target victims who come from poor economic backgrounds, have little education and live in remote areas where there are only police precincts.”

For its many shortcomings, the report has given Indonesia a Tier-2 rank for the seventh consecutive year since the study was first carried out in 2008. This means that the government has “not fully [complied] with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, [although] it is making significant efforts to do so”.

The report’s ranking system provides an overview on the level of engagement that a country has against human trafficking around the world, generally consistent with the 2000 UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons.

The State Department Report also said that in Southeast Asia labor abuses in the seafood sector are persistent, abusive and largely ignored by the government.

The report said that Thai, Burmese, Cambodian and Indonesian men are still subjected to forced labor on Thai fishing boats.

“Some men remain at sea for several years, are paid very little or irregularly, work as much as 18 to 20 hours per day for seven days a week, or are threatened and physically beaten,” the report said.
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