Justice for Ruyati! Repartriate Her Body Back to Indonesia! Save All Indonesian Migrant Workers from Death Row!

“We strongly condemn the Indonesian government’s inaction to rescue Ruyati. Her death shows the lack of will of the government to save and protect its own people overseas from the death row and, instead, grossly neglect them.”

This was declared by Sringatin, one of the spokespersons of the Alliance of IMWs to Scrap Law 39 in a rally in front of the Indonesian Consulate today in response to the case of Ruyati, an Indonesian domestic worker who was beheaded last 18 June 2011 by the Saudi Arabian government for killing the mother of her employer.

Ruyati, 45 years old and a mother of three children, went to Saudi Arabia for the second time and was employed for one year and three months. During her employment, she was refused rest days, given insufficient food even during fasting month, was not given her wage for seven months and continuously abused physically by the mother of her employer.

Due to such unbearable treatment, she appealed to the employment agency in Saudi Arabia to allow her to terminate the contract and return to Indonesia. However, the agency threatened her with violations of the employment contract if she would leave. Finally on 12 January 2011, she killed her employer’s mother, was arrested and was found guilty as she confessed to the crime. The Indonesian government claimed they were not aware of the beheading of Ruyati.

“Ruyati was just one of the many IMWs who were unjustly punished to die overseas. Currently 303 IMWs are in death row and 28 of them are in Saudi Arabia. What has the government been doing to save them? They only export us, earn from us and now abandon us” Sringatin added.

Responding to the massive demonstration in Indonesia and overseas for its falire to save Ruyati, the Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono decided to impose a moratorium on deployment of IMWs to Saudi Arabia effective August 1, 2011.

“Moratorium is not a solution to our problem. In fact it will push more desperate Indonesian migrants to take illegal channels to migrate and make them more vulnerable to exploitation. What we need is genuine protection by creating agreements for protection with all receiving countries and instituting a standard employment contract” she added.

Sringatin explained that the contract should include the right to wages, rest days, annual leave, the right of association and other entitlements as defined in the recently approved ILO Convention for Domestic Worker and the UN Convention for the Protection of Migrant Workers and Their Families.

“Ruyati may not have been beheaded if only she was afforded her rights and informed of where to go for assistance when she was in need. She was only a victim in this case, she was not criminal. If anyone should be mainly accountable, it should be the Indonesian government” she said.

Umi Sudarto, also a spokesperson of the group, outlined that Law No. 39/2004 on Deployment and Protection of IMWs is extremely detrimental to Indonesian migrant workers and their families as it provide full authority to recruitment agency to recruit, deploy and “protect” IMWs. In return, the government allows them to squeeze payments from IMWs for several months through salary deductions, withhold passports and contracts, confine IMWs in dormitories for months while waiting for working visa, falsify identity, and other human right violations. The Law also stated that the maximum sanction for an erring recruitment agency is merely and administrative one and IMWs are provided with limited clauses for redress.

“Law No. 39 should be totally scrapped as in essence it promotes deployment without protection. As long as the government does not change its orientation of profit over protection, then we will always be vulnerable and our lives will be considered of less value than what the government and recruiters earn” she explained.

Sudarto also said that IMWs are forced to go to recruitment agencies and “the government made us believe that they will protect us.”

“But the truth is that they cheat, bully and exploit us endlessly.  What the President said that recruitment agencies are the ones that send us abroad and the government holds no accountability, is simply not true. The government just wants to wash their hands off its responsibility to us.

The government should do all it can to repartriat Ruyati’s body to her family in Indonesia and save all IMWs from death row. We do not want more Ruyati. We want the government to end this exploitation and provide us with a genuine protection," Umi Sudarto concluded.

The rally which attended by 700 Indonesian migrant workers was ended with submission of petition to the representative of Indonesian Consulate in HK