Jakarta – The Witness and Victim Protection Agency (LPSK) received nearly 1,300 witness protection requests related to human trafficking cases last year, the agency's deputy head Antonius PS Wibowo said on Wednesday, a day after the United Nations' World Day against Trafficking in Persons.
"Trafficking is a crime with the second-highest witness protection requests in the LPSK, after sexual abuse," Antonius said as reported by kompas.com, adding that at least 56 requests last year were for children.
West Nusa Tenggara accounted for the most requests by province, with 179 cases, followed by West Java, Central Java, East Nusa Tenggara and East Java with 143, 139, 124, and 112 cases respectively.
Antonius went on to say that trafficking continued to be a serious problem in the country, as this year so far the LPSK had received 355 protection requests for victims and witnesses of human smuggling.
He said traffickers were now using more complex methods to lure victims and that even well-educated people were now being targeted, such as in a case that saw over 1,000 university students fall victim to a fake internship program in Germany.
The program facilitator claimed the program, called Ferienjob, was part of the Indonesian education ministry's Merdeka Belajar Kampus Merdeka (freedom to learn, free campus) internship program that allows students to earn academic credits beyond the classroom and helps them familiarize themselves with the employment market.
Believing their internships would pay well and count for academic credit, the students reportedly left for Germany in October of last year, where they encountered manual labor jobs and wages below what was contractually stipulated.
Deputy German Ambassador to Indonesia Thomas Grafe said Ferienjob was a program for foreign students who wanted to experience working in Germany while on vacation. "But it is not an internship program," he told Tempo Magazine on March 28.
Antonius of the LPSK cited another case, uncovered by the police last year, in which an illegal organ trafficking syndicate ferried 18 Indonesians victims to Cambodia to sell their kidneys.
The ring had been operating since 2019, earning Rp 24.4 billion (US$1.5 million) in total. The traffickers received Rp 200 million for each kidney, pocketing Rp 65 million and giving the rest to the victims.
"We need more thorough efforts and continuous cooperation between authorities at the national and local levels to be able to effectively prevent these crimes," Antonius said. (nal)