The original idea for this post came from when my sister asked me about how the Black Lives Matter movement was affecting Indonesia. I was initially thinking of writing about the Papuan Lives Matter spin-off, an Indonesian movement protesting the inequality and racism that Papuan’s encounter in other parts of Indonesia. However, in early May, several stories broke of the appalling conditions under which fishermen are working in international waters. This got me thinking about how slavery is not just a historic issue but is very much still a problem today…
Indonesian Lives Matter
Recent news stories, and viral videos, of the deaths of Indonesian sailors working on Chinese fishing vessels highlights the tragedy that whilst, many countries in the world are focussed on the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, protesting the racism embedded in society since the slave trade of Africans to the Americas in the 18th and 19th centuries, slavery is a very real and present issue for many people including Indonesians.
24.9 million people globally are enslaved in forced labour, according to the Global Slavery Index 2018, from the Walk Free Foundation (www.globalslaveryindex.org). Modern slavery is most prevalent in Africa and the Asia Pacific region. Indonesia is in the top 10 countries, with an estimated 1.2 million Indonesians subject to modern slavery, just under 0.5% of the population. Indonesians are most likely to be exploited in the fishing, maritime and domestic worker industries, where migrant workers leave their homes to work overseas in jurisdictions where they have little protection.
Colonial Slavery in Indonesia
As part of the Black Lives Matter movement in the Netherlands, protesters called for the statue of Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the Governor-General of the Dutch Trade Company in the 17th century in the Dutch East Indies to be removed. Slave trading was widely carried out during the Dutch colonial period in Indonesia.
Whilst the terrible details of the slave trade from Africa to the Americas is well known, there is much less known and documented about the slave trade in Asia, and in particular Indonesia. The slave trade in Asia was more multi-faceted and built upon trade patterns established before Europeans arrived. It was also local practice, after a war between tribes, for the winning tribe to take slaves from the losing tribe. Many Chinese indentured labourers came to Indonesia, as well as slaves being traded between the many Indonesian islands and provinces. Indonesians were also shipped across the Indian ocean to India, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
The National Archives of the Netherlands has started research on slavery in the former Dutch East Indies, and it is estimated that over one million people were bought, sold or endured slavery during the 17th and 18th centuries. The Dutch government abolished slavery in its former Asian territories as late as 1860. In practice however, slavery continued to exist for many years in the Indonesian archipelago, albeit on a reduced scale.
It is estimated that during the heyday of Batavia (now Jakarta), slaves outnumbered their owners, and as such there were very strict rules for slaves, and severe punishments for violators. These rules included restrictions on gathering together, carrying weapons or even using fireworks in celebrations. If a slave accidentally bumped into a European on the street, they would be punished with a savage beating. Whilst it was illegal for Dutch owners to kill their slaves, in practice if a beating led to a death it was seldom punished.
Sumarta was home to many large planation’s, including a large tobacco plantation near Medan, named Deli. Deli was founded by Jacob Nienhuys, a Dutch tobacco trader, in 1863, when the Sultan of Deli granted him a land concession. As the local Malays and Batiks did not want to work on the plantation, he imported Chinese coolies. The planation soon grew into a very large-scale operation including a processing plant, with over 500,000 people working on the site. Nienhuys continued to import Chinese, but also workers from Java, Banjar, and India. It is estimated 200,000 Chinese were brought into Deli from 1888-1930, but over time the workers were increasingly Javanese with 230,000 there in 1930.
Whilst the workers were in theory indentured workers, they were treated as savagely as slaves, with poor living conditions, beatings and manhunts for any who dared try and run away. Nienhuys was eventually asked to leave Deli by the Sultan after some particularly violent incidents, but his replacement seems to have been little better. A report in 1904, estimated that around a quarter of the workers died before fulfilling their contracts. A monument to Nienhuys was erected in Medan in 1915 but has since been removed.
The figures above are staggering, and raise the question that if they are correct, and the slave population of one planation alone constituted over 200,000 Chinese, then the estimates of a total of one million slaves traded during the whole colonial period in Indonesia could well be underestimated.
Modern Fishing & Maritime Workers
For Indonesian fishermen working on internationally flagged ships, it seems unfortunately that 30-hour shifts, with very little food, and without adequate fresh water is not uncommon. The recent videos of sea burials highlight that the mortality rate for these workers is high.
Over 1.1 million Indonesians work as seafarers domestically and internationally, according to a recent government estimate. Whilst jurisdictional complications make it hard to apply and enforce workers’ rights in the maritime industry, with fishing companies, boats and workers coming from multiple countries, the problem is further exacerbated by the lack of protection under Indonesian law.
After the recent cases the Indonesian Director General of the Ministry of Fishery, has said Indonesia would likely impose a 6-month moratorium on Indonesians going to work on foreign fishing vessels. During this time the authorities would work to streamline and strengthen the process for approving recruitment agents, employers and candidates. This would allow greater policing of the system that operates within Indonesia.
At the same time, Indonesia has also said it will now consider ratifying the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Work in Fishing Convention (C188). The convention establishes a minimum working age, standard work agreements and crew protections. It also requires governments to adopt national regulations to ensure vessel owners provide for the health and safety of crew members. Only 18 countries have ratified the convention to date.
So have we progressed?
Sadly, slavery is still extremely prevalent, and if the estimates of over one million Indonesians in slavery today are correct, then it seems things have not improved much at all from colonial times.
Modern slavery is hard to track, police and prosecute, and somehow is less visible than the historic trade. That is not an acceptable excuse to tolerate the practice, and the international community should focus on measures that can be implemented to reduce and eventually eliminate it. The Global Slavery Index suggests that better supply chain tracking would go a long way to helping authorities identify and clamp down on suppliers with sub-standard labour practices, and would also give consumers information to help promote conscious buying choices. International implementation and enforcement of minimum working condition standards is also vital. By taking positive steps in these and other areas progress can be made to reduce and eventually eradicate this inhumane practice, such that we will hopefully not still be protesting the effects of slavery in another hundred years.
(Sources include: theconversation.com, The Jakarta Post, South China Morning Post, Walk Free Foundation, Mongabay.com)
Letter from Jakarta. 