http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/06/02/ruyati-beheading-brought-vain-glory-down-earth.html
Insight: Ruyati beheading brought vain glory down to earth
B. Herry-Priyono, Jakarta | Tue, 06/28/2011 11:15 PM
In the old days, kings and queens employed jesters to bring them down to earth. Court jesters acted as gadflies whose task was not confined to providing amusement, but also to supply satire that often bit to the bones of their masters. But such jesters may not be needed by the President of Indonesia: not because there is no need for him to be in touch with reality, but because jesters have many forms and faces. After a presuming speech at the International Labor Conference on the protection of migrant workers, the beheading of an Indonesian migrant worker called Ruyati binti Satubi by the Saudi government served as unerringly as a prophetic jest.
This is hard to swallow for a government that aspires to be called successful by carefully staging games of appearance. Even harder is the way of ensuring how, when history repeats itself, it is not another tragedy of this sort. No doubt the current talk of a moratorium on sending migrant workers to Saudi Arabia is lofty on paper, but it is bound to be overrun by another flurry of emergencies. The problem of migrant workers in the Middle East is a complicated one, and the choice is not between completely halting and business as usual. Rather, it is about the cognizance that the labor market for migrant workers is the most vulnerable market of any kind.
The term "labor market" is ludicrous even in an economic sense. Human labor is the last bastion in the arsenal of humanity that has been shattered by capitalism. The "smashing" took the form of turning human toils into a commodity on the same level as other commodities. For those who study economics only as the market system - and not as a science of human livelihood, of which the market is only a tool - there is nothing bizarre about this preposterous nature of labor markets. However, a moment's reflection is enough to realize that in all respects human labor is not a commodity. It is made into a commodity only by academic atrocities.
Alas, we can only start from what history has inscribed. Precisely because human labor is a bogus commodity, a labor market is usually the most regulated market, i.e., social regulations and protection are applied heavily to minimize its dehumanizing effects. This is particularly true with migrant workers whose plight is entangled with the legal systems of the countries of destination.
If the countries of destination are ones with good social regulations in their labor market, migrant workers will have the fortune of thriving well. But in many cases the countries of destination are ruled by despotic systems, in which a contract between an employer and an employee is but another name for a master-slave relationship. A slave is one whose misery of being exploited is considered more palatable compared to the misery of not being exploited at all. Of course this is not a language of the normative.
But why is being exploited more bearable than not being exploited? The answer lies not in the country of destination but in that of origin. This is a dilemma of a government caught in quandary. On the one hand, to not allow migrant workers to seek livelihoods in despotic countries is to invite hard-pressed demands for providing employment at home. On the other, allowing them to work in despotic countries is like the government is inflicting itself with political impotence. In short, government is captive to the unscrupulous logic of both the labor markets and national sovereignty in international relations.
This is what is now giving a headache to the ministries of Manpower and Foreign Affairs. It is rather pointless to rehearse the solutions, for these two ministries and the Law and Human Rights Ministry should know what to do on the ground. The most that can be said is that the lower the workers are situated on the employment ladder, the more urgently they need affirmative action from the government.
This of course is stating a self-evident normative. The bad news is that power has an inherent bias against those inhabiting the lower strata of a political game. Thus we get this unpleasant truth beyond a shadow of doubt: Those who most gravely need affirmative action from government are precisely those most prone to being ignored.
Change in this unprincipled exercise of power is the last thing we can expect. A solution in the form of high-level diplomacy can be expected only if office holders of these ministries are not caught in a similar web of useless public relations. The duty of a political authority is to know that diplomatic trivia is no substitute for a real redress of the physically brutal nature of a tragedy like that which befell Ruyati.
Indeed, the real power of a state office rests in the skill by which its holder can use their authority to get the right things done. Otherwise, political power simply means the pleasure an office holder may get from a purely personal exercise of will, which basically is an act of being a political parasite in the land of the crestfallen.
The writer is a lecturer in the postgraduate program at Driyarkara School of Philosophy, Jakarta.
Related News >>
a.. SBY protests Ruyati execution in letter to Saudi king
b.. Letter: Fuss about Saudi Arabia
c.. Letter: Why do they go to Saudi Arabia?
d.. President: Indonesia to ban labor export to Saudi by Aug. 1
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http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2011/06/28/letter-why-do-they-go-saudi-arabia.html
Letter: Why do they go to Saudi Arabia?
| Tue, 06/28/2011 7:00 AM
I offer my condolences and grief to the family of Ruyati binti Satubi, and there will be no one who can replace her.
First, I would like to know why so many maids go to Saudi Arabia if they know the consequences. This is not the first time that such an incident has occurred. Is it the religion that pulls them towards the country? If so, why do they not work in Indonesia? The income may be not as big as in Saudi Arabia, but what is money if you are killed?
Maids in Hong Kong or in Singapore are more stylish, polite and fluent in English, and I think all these employers are also more polite to their workers.
What has happened? Let me say that any murder is punishable. The government is not responsible for the act of individual. The government can only intervene and impose a life sentence instead of death. The government's payment of Rp 4.7 billion (US$545,200) in blood money sets a bad example that people who kill can buy freedom by paying blood money.
There are currently other Indonesians on death row in Saudi Arabia, and if the government pays for each of them as with Darsem (an Indonesian maid in Saudi Arabia), then the treasury department needs more money to be allocated from the state budget, as many citizens will realize that the government will free them if they kill or murder anyone.
The murder or killing of an employer may be done out of deep stress or self-protection or extreme situations, but then again, the very first question arises of why go to these countries?
Every crime has to be punished whether it is small or big. Each country has its own laws. If the government says that the beheading of Ruyati was not right then, they should not give the death penalty to their criminals at home. And those in the "Bali Nine" case should only be given life imprisonment.
If the Saudi Arabian government did not inform the Indonesian government about the case, then that is a separate issue and should be dealt with diplomatically.
Rajesh
Jakarta
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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