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Why Indonesia and Hong Kong must resolve issues faced by domestic workers

Source
South China Morning Post - December 8, 2019

Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat – News about the 165,000 Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong dominates coverage of the relationship between the city and the Southeast Asian nation.

These stories are often focused on the hardships endured by domestic workers from Indonesia, who work long hours for extremely low wages. While the two governments have worked to improve the situation, such reports continue to overshadow the continued expansion of their political, cultural and business ties.

More controversy erupted last week when Yuli Riswati, a domestic worker who covered the Hong Kong protests as a citizen journalist, was deported after being arrested for overstaying her visa. Her supporters accused the government of sending her home for her work on Migran Pos, an Indonesian online news portal she launched in March.

Indonesian news site Republik Merdeka reported that Yuli had tried several times to renew her visa, only to have her requests turned down by the authorities.

Besides covering social unrest in the city for the not-for-profit news site, Yuli also wrote about the treatment of domestic workers in Hong Kong. To protest against her arrest, supporters demonstrated at the Immigration Tower in Wan Chai with banners and posters demanding her release and asking Hong Kong to stop persecuting migrants.

Yuli's case sparked concern when it was covered by local media in Indonesia, where it is believed to have furthered a negative perception regarding Hong Kong as a work destination. According to a 2017 BBC Indonesia report, of around 300 cases of sexual and physical violence reported in the city yearly, 50 per cent of the victims were Indonesian workers.

There are far too many such cases reported. In January 2014, Erwiana Sulistyaningsih accused her employer of physically abusing her for six months, sparking public outrage after photographs of her injuries spread on social media.

Her employer was sentenced to six years in jail in 2015, but was released after serving half her sentence. Indonesian media also reported the case of Tri Wahyuni, who was speaking to a friend on Facebook Live last year when she was threatened and physically assaulted by her employer.

Amnesty International reported in November 2013 that thousands of Indonesian women trafficked to Hong Kong faced "slavery-like" conditions, while a survey of more than 3,000 domestic workers in March that year by the Mission for Migrant Workers charity found that 58 per cent reported suffering verbal abuse, 18 per cent reported physical abuse and 6 per cent reported sexual harassment.

While these episodes have both framed and frayed relations, ties between Indonesia and Hong Kong are multifaceted, with a history of trade, investment, cooperation and tourism. Indonesia is Hong Kong's 22nd-largest trading partner, with trade between the two reaching US$5.4 billion in 2017. Jonathan Choi, chairman of the Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, Hong Kong, last April said Indonesia was a "connector nation" for the financial and service sectors, and thus was a country that had great potential for investors.

Indonesia also understands the importance of Hong Kong. In April, the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and Indonesia's Directorate General for National Export Development signed a memorandum of understanding to boost their partnership in the fields of trade and investment.

A previous move to facilitate their economic ties saw the governments in 2012 sign an agreement on the avoidance of double taxation and the prevention of income tax evasion. The 2017 Bilateral Competent Authority Agreement, meanwhile, allows Indonesia to access financial information from Hong Kong in a bid to boost tax transparency.

Tourism is another growing sector for both Hong Kong and Indonesia. In Southeast Asia, Indonesia ranks third for tourist arrivals to Hong Kong, behind the Philippines and Thailand, according to a 2018 report by the Indonesian newspaper Kompas.

A cultural partnership between the two governments is also beginning to pan out. Last year, they signed a memorandum of understanding on cultural cooperation, the scope of which included film, gastronomy and cultural education.

None of this is to suggest that the issues faced by Indonesian domestic workers have been left by the wayside. Indonesia and Hong Kong in 2016 intensified their cooperation on immigration and employment by establishing a joint working group to address various issues encountered by Indonesians living in the city.

However, as the governments are still unable to fully address the problems related to migrant workers, it is likely that Indonesia's relations with Hong Kong will continue to be coloured by the same issue.

At the same time, however, the two governments also see the potential for collaboration in various sectors, mainly trade and investment, buttressed by their growing cultural ties.

Sooner or later, as the relationship between the two increases and expands, Indonesia and Hong Kong will realise that issues such as the treatment of foreign workers represent an obstacle to the improvement of their partnership and they will acknowledge that more robust and serious efforts need to be taken – including being more transparent about them.

[Muhammad Zulfikar Rakhmat is a lecturer at the Islamic University of Indonesia and research associate at the Institute for Development of Economics and Finance in Jakarta.]

Source: https://www.scmp.com/print/week-asia/opinion/article/3040976/why-indonesia-and-hong-kong-must-resolve-issues-faced-domestic

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