Written by Katrina Capeding
On February 22-28 2023, migrant and women’s organizations from Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippines, India, Nepal, and Mongolia gathered for the 2nd Regional Migration FPAR Training in Yogyakarta,Indonesia and presented findings from community consultations with migrant women’s communities. The stories of women migrant workers across Asia Pacific are weaved from the same thread and strengthened by our common struggles – the struggle for decent work and protection against gender-based violence.
Violence and migration
Being a woman migrant worker in Asia, all the stages of migration come with violence. The violence in their own homes that pushed women to migrate for financial freedom and physical security. The violence at the hands of their foreign employers and discrimination from their host countries.
Such are the stories of struggles shared in our FPAR Training in various forms. Women migrant workers in Nepal bear the brunt of non-procedural migration, exposing them to illegal recruiters. Filipino factory workers in Taiwan do not have full access to their benefits, while internal migrant workers in India face discrimination based on ethnicity and gender.
But violence, too, has other forms. The violence of government negligence that leaves migrant workers vulnerable in a foreign country to fend for themselves. The violence of poverty that pushed them to migrate, and threatens them when they return.
Migrant women fight back
FPAR, in the hands of oppressed women migrant workers, is not only a tool but both a sword and an armor. After days of learning about methodologies of research, legal analysis, and crafting our FPAR story, we traveled to Cilacap to learn how a community wielded FPAR for their campaign against document confiscation.
Cilacap is a small city in Central Java, Indonesia, that has one of the highest rates of external migration in the whole country. In 2020, returned women migrant workers in Cilacap were previous FPAR partners of APWLD through Kabar Bumi.
I was in awe of how Kabar Bumi utilized FPAR not only for their campaign, but also for strengthening and expanding their organization. The women migrant workers in Cilacap told us their experience abroad, how Kabar Bumi taught them their rights, and how they were able to mobilize women and retrieve their documents from recruitment agencies.
The Cilacap community inspired us to take these learnings home and practice it in our own countries, and it helped us visualize our impact objective. It also taught us that after the FPAR story, its methods and tools are continuously used by the community to fight for their rights.
Meeting Mary Jane
Our FPAR Training wrapped up in tears and solidarity as we visited Mary Jane Veloso in Lapas Perempuan Wonosari Gundungkidul, a women’s prison in Yogyakarta. The guards told us it has been a few years since she had this many visitors because of the pandemic.
In 2010, Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina migrant worker, was arrested in Indonesia after police found bags of heroin sewed in the lining of her luggage. During her hearing, she had no lawyer, translator, and a licensed interpreter, yet she still maintained her innocence. Mary Jane said that she was tricked by her recruiter and that she is a victim of human trafficking. But with no means to defend herself, she was sentenced with the death penalty.
Mary Jane’s case would only be discovered by her family by 2014, and it quickly gained attention from the media. Public outrage ensued, pressuring the national government to investigate. This led to the arrest and imprisonment of her recruiters. Yet, Mary Jane remains imprisoned to this day.
As a Filipina migrant organizer fighting for women’s rights, meeting Mary Jane was a highly emotional experience. Before then, I only knew her face in decade-old newspaper clippings and her stories through her family.
Mary Jane told us stories, sang us a song that she composed, and showed us the batik and other products she had learned to weave while in prison. Before we left, she hugged us all, and I felt that although we didn’t know each other, we were tied by the same string – we, and everyone else in that room, were fighting the same fight.
Reflections
I am deeply grateful for the experience that the APWLD has given me through FPAR, community exchange learning, and visiting Mary Jane Veloso. And, I think I speak for all researchers when I say that we are looking forward to our last training as we culminate all of our learnings and share the victories of women migrant workers in our own countries.
