Governor Heryawan banned Ahmadiyyah, now wife calls the Trafficking Victims ‘Hedonists’
A leading migrant workers’ activist has lashed out at the prominent wife of the West Java provincial governor, warning that her remarks blaming victims of human trafficking for their own misery were “dangerous” and misleading.
“A prominent person should watch his or her mouth, such statements are very dangerous,” Anis Hidayah, the executive director of the group Migrant Care, told the Jakarta Globe over the weekend.
On Friday, Netty Prasetiyani Heryawan, the wife of controversial West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan and the head of the West Java Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Agency, said that Indonesian women who go overseas for work and fall prey to human traffickers had only themselves to blame.
“They’re going abroad or just leaving West Java only so that they can live out their hedonistic lifestyles,” Netty said Friday. “And for these women seeking a hedonistic life, they end up becoming victims of human trafficking.”
……………… Earlier this year, Governor Heryawan issued a decree banning the Ahmadiyah sect from spreading its beliefs through any media in West Java and forbidding the group to display its name in public.
Activists criticized the move for contributing to religious intolerance in the province.