Thirty-two alleged sex workers, mostly from Vietnam, have been arrested by The Law and Human Rights Ministry from three nightclubs in Indonesia's capital city of Jakarta for violating immigration procedures.
According to Jakarta Post, officials have also confiscated 27 passports of Vietnamese, Kazakh, Chinese, Uzbek, Moroccan and Russian nationals during the crackdown. Moreover, Rp 5 million in cash, cellphones, contraceptives and karaoke hostess uniforms were recovered from the arrested women.
It is also reported that the raid was carried out by investigators of the ministry's Immigration Office on 12 January and it was the second of its kind in the past three weeks. A total of 137 alleged foreign sex workers has been arrested in the series of raids.
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Immigration Office's foreign nationals monitoring and law enforcement director, Yurod Saleh, accused the women of violating a number of immigration laws. The detainees failed to show passport and overstayed a visa, said the officer. "They entered Indonesia using tourist visas and visas on arrival," said Yurod, as reported.
The officer also said that police is hunting for the human trafficking networks that sent the girls to Indonesia.
On New Year's Eve, Immigration Office's investigators arrested 125 suspected female sex workers, mostly Chinese nationals, from numerous cities across Indonesia.
