Not to be a slave, Not to be tortured

News about Indonesian manpower working overseas took my concern few days ago. It’s sad to see all that keeps happening again and again. We (our country, our people) do not seem to learn from the past about what’s happening, and they (our working people), what do they actually look for in foreign country? What do they expect?

Maybe their aim is simple that they want to earn a living for themselves, for their family. But the fact that happened to them is so miserable. The aim of nobility meets the act of cruelty. Going abroad, working as a housemaid with (they think) a sky-high salary may become a temptation, a promising temptation but the fact is it’s just a danger in disguise. Okay, fine! Maybe I never know how hard the lives they had been dealing with in this country; maybe I never know how it feels not to get a financial safety very often in lives whatsoever. Yet all I know is that risking yourself to be tortured abroad is not a justifiable justification to earn a better living after all. That, on the other hand, is just going to hurt you yourself, might as well family you are fighting for.



There are a lot of stories about those Indonesian housemaids going abroad making relatively a lot of money, being spoiled by their boss, coming home with the chance of making new life, a better one. But there are not a few of terrible ones to tell either; about being unpaid, being tortured, being treated like nothing of human, being raped, or even tortured to death. If you think that it is crazy, yes it is. It doesn’t make any sense, no it doesn’t. Certainly it’s still fresh in our memory story about an Indonesian woman climbed down a fourteenth storey room to escape from her boss’s apartment in Malaysia, a woman had to go to the jail in Emirate Arab Union for the thing she never did. Not to mention the recent story of Siti Hajar coming home from Malaysia with all bruises all over her body, burnt and bitten scars around her ear, and dozens of other sad stories I believe it’s not only hurting her (them) physically but also mentally. Our women are not supposed to (must not) be treated that way; no women in this world are. However, our women (most of them, as you know, coming from the side of which enduring financial issue) are blinded by the sky-high salary then risk all the things, their lives actually. So, see the fact! Think twice ladies!

Never said that we blame government for this entire things happened, but they had better provided a better security for their own people (women) working abroad, even can be said their assets. Even before those women decide to go wherever abroad to be a working labor specifically a housemaid, job field should be already provided in their own country. Even if they are determined to go, they should be supplied by those sufficient skills, knowledge, or even self defense skills if necessary (this one is silly I know, but seeing the fact, what would you do?). Eventually, our governments (we obviously) have to defend their (our) self-esteem, telling and proving the world that our country is prosperous enough not to let their own people to be treated as, I’m sorry, slaves in other countries, nor in their own.