For hundreds of Indonesians in Saudi Arabia, being locked up and deported back home holds its own attraction. Some 1,000 Indonesian overstayers, mostly workers who do not hold proper documents, have been detained at a Saudi immigration detention center to await deportation, the foreign ministry said on Friday. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said 568 of the 1,028 Indonesians now in detention, had been nabbed after conducting a protest in front of the Indonesian consulate general in Jeddah late on Wednesday. The rally, he said, quoting the consulate’s report, had been organized to demand the consulate and the Saudi authorities accord them some attention and assistance in returning home. “There were 360 women and 208 men taken into detention following the rally,” Faizasyah said, adding that as soon as the news reached the other overstayers, 500 more people staged a rally in the hopes that they too would be detained and repatriated. He said the protesters were undocumented migrant workers who had remained in Saudi Arabia after they performed the minor hajj pilgrimage, or umrah , and workers who had fled from their employers. Faizasyah said they were stranded in Saudi Arabia because they refused to pay fines for overstaying and were now trying to find a way home without having to pay. He added that he thought their actions were disgraceful. Foreign Minister Hassan Wirajuda said in July that he had personally witnessed Indonesians trying to get themselves arrested in Saudi Arabia. “This is not about citizen protection anymore but a misdeed committed by our own citizens,” he said. Faizasyah said that the Indonesian government had formed an interdepartmental team to meet with their Saudi counterparts to seek a comprehensive solutions to the problem. Meanwhile, labor activist Anis Hidayah, who is the director of Migrant Care, disagreed that the overstayers were acting out in a bid to get a free flight home. She said the consulate general had refused to acknowledge the protesters’ situation and infrequently monitored the condition of migrant workers there. “Most of them came to work legally but they were abused and weren’t paid, so they ran away from their employers,” Anis said, adding that they were undocumented because their employers had retained their passports. “Some of them are also victims of trafficking and got lured to work there by using visas issued for the umrah,” she said. Such trafficking, Anis said, was made possible because some of the migration agencies sending Indonesian workers overseas also organized umrah and hajj tours for pilgrims. “We should see them as victims,” Anis said. “None of them would deliberately give up like that to leave.” She said that the government should not generalize the overstayers as being illegal because the government also shared part of the blame for their ordeal, adding that the lengthy and costly process for becoming a migrant worker was the main reason behind unscrupulous migration brokers offering easier and faster, albeit illegal, ways for Indonesians to find jobs overseas. “Even if they do go through the legal procedures, it does not necessarily guarantee that they will be protected,” Anis said. Officials figures put the number of Indonesian migrant workers overseas at some 4.3 million, but it is estimated that about 4 million more are unregistered and went abroad through unofficial channels.
