Hong Kong deaths shine light on international sex trade

By Ainur Rohmah

JAKARTA

The two young women left their families and the poverty of provincial Indonesia to seek jobs in Hong Kong, both dreaming of wages many times what they could expect in their hometowns.

Last weekend, however, their mutilated bodies were found at the luxury apartment of a British banker.

Sumarti Ningsih, 25, and 30-year-old Seneng Mujiasih appear to have been drawn into the seedy world of Hong Kong’s sex industry, where young women - mostly from Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines - spend their time touting for rich expat customers in the bars of Wan Chai’s red light district.

This week, the Anadolu Agency spoke to those involved in and affected by the transportation of women from poverty-stricken communities to the red light areas of cities like Hong Kong and Manila to discover what fuels the trade.

"She wanted to save money for the future of her son, so he could go to school and be smart,” Ningsih’s father Ahmad Kaliman, 58, told an AA correspondent by telephone from his home in Cilacap, a port city on the southern coast of Indonesia’s Java island.

Kaliman, a farmer who earns the equivalent of $3 a day, told how he tried to stop his daughter from leaving forHong Kong three months ago but the lure of riches beyond anything she could hope to attain in Indonesia proved too great.

"I forbid her to go to Hong Kong, but she wanted to make money,” he said, his voice quivering with emotion. “We could not prevent her.”

Ningsih, as her family knew her, left behind a five-year-old son from a failed marriage to a local man. She reportedly sent around $250 a month to her family.

Mujiasih’s family told a similar story of a young woman trying to improve the lives of her family with money she could earn in Hong Kong, where she had remained after her visa expired.

Her brother Siswantoro said she had been travelling to the former British colony for the past eight years as a domestic worker, sending money back to her hometown of Kendari, the provincial capital of Southeast Sulawesi, to pay for a house.

"We just want to give her a worthy burial in her hometown," he added.

The case attracted worldwide attention after the grisly discovery. Mujiasih, also known as Jesse Lorena Ruri, was found on the apartment floor with knife wounds to her neck and buttocks while Ningsih’s mutilated body was found in a suitcase on the apartment’s balcony.

Rurik Jutting, a 29-year-old Briton who until recently worked for Bank of America Merrill Lynch, has since been charged with their murders.

The man who arranged for Ningsih to travel to Hong Kong, employment agency boss Tjiro Tandjung Djaja, told AA it is common for women to travel from Indonesia to other parts of Asia to take on work as housekeepers or maids and then take up second jobs in the sex industry.

"During work time, they do jobs as domestic workers while at night they work at nightclubs and as sex workers," he said.

Tjiro said the practice of taking on two jobs was also common in other countries with high numbers of migrant workers from Southeast Asia - such as Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Malaysia.

"This is because they want to get as much money as possible to help their poor families in their hometowns," he said.

An Indonesian prostitute with experience of working inHong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea described to AA how she followed her elder sister into the trade in Semarang on Java’s north coast before moving abroad.

Rina (not her real name) posed as a migrant worker to travel to Hong Kong when she was 16.

“I knew a friend who also worked as a prostitute and she became my mentor there,” she said.

Asked her motive for working abroad, she added: “[The] money is higher when converted into [Indonesian] rupiah.”

Rina said that networks exist overseas to set up women with contacts and apartments to work from - some of whom fall into prostitution after working in legitimate jobs and others who use their migrant worker status as a cover.

At the age of 21, she said she has become the wealthiest woman in her home village of Purwodadi, having invested her earnings in land and gold.

"I also paid for my little sister’s education," she added.

Despite this wealth, she continues to ply her trade in Semarang’s Bandungan neighborhood.

"If I end up contracting AIDS and die, I will not regret it,” she said. “Since I already have a savings account at least my family will not starve when I leave."

Ari Istiadi, coordinator at Griya Asa, an NGO that helps sex workers in Semarang, said most prostitutes were driven into the industry by poverty.

"Many of them follow friends or family who already live with this profession," he said.

Turning to the trafficking of women for the sex industry - declared an emergency by the Indonesian government last year - Ari said Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, the Middle East, the U.S. and Europe were the most popular trafficking destinations.

On the other side of the Indonesian island of Java, Ningsih’s family told how they had expected her to return home Sunday, when her Hong Kong visa expired - only to receive a phone call informing them of her death a day later.

"I thought she worked in a restaurant," her father Kaliman, who has three other children, continued.

Recalling how she had left for Jakarta at the age of 12 to find work, he added: "At that time, I wanted her to continue school but she did not want to be a trouble [to her family]."

At 19 she married and had a son but separated from her husband, leaving for Hong Kong for the first time in 2011. After three years she returned to Cilacap where she took a DJ course before returning to Hong Kong in August on a tourist visa.

Neighbor Ngatiman described Ningsih as a friendly woman devoted to her parents. "As far as I know, she always sent money every month," he said. Ngatiman said Ningsih was a devout Muslim who donated sacrificial animals during Eid al-Adha as well as money for building a mosque.

Gabriel G. Sola, coordinator for the Working Group Against Human Trafficking, told the Anadolu Agency the Indonesian government had failed to apply penalties to sex trafficking groups - often companies that operate under the guise of overseas employment agencies.

"Law enforcement officers and related government officials are suspected of being part of a network of human trafficking syndicates," he said.

In addition, he called for the government to tackle the root causes of trafficking – poverty, lack of jobs, economic discrimination and weak law enforcement.

The U.S. State Department has identified Indonesia as a main source, destination and transit point for the sex trade and forced labor while Migrant Care Indonesia has said four in ten migrant workers from Indonesia, about 3 million people, are the victims of human trafficking.

Earlier this year, Linda Amalia Sari Gumelar, Indonesia’s then minister for women’s empowerment and child protection, told the Jakarta Globe newspaper: “Human trafficking, a form of modern slavery, has generated huge amounts of money for syndicates across the world. These criminals and the dangers they pose should be placed equivalent to that of arms dealers and drug rings.”

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