THE ANALYSIS OF INDONESIA’S POLICY ON SENDING INDONESIAN DOMESTIC WORKERS TO THE ROYAL KINGDOM OF SAUDI ARABIA: LESSON LEARNED FROM THE DEATH EXECUTION OF RUYATI BINTI SATUBI (2011-2013)

Abstract

The Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a rich country which needs a lot of human resources. Along with this phenomenon, Indonesia rises to the top list of countries which able to help Saudi Arabia in case of domestic workers’ demand. But, unfortunately many problems showed up regarding to the activity of sending Indonesian domestic workers’ abroad. Cases of murder dominated the reason why many Indonesian domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are convicted to death penalty. Indonesian law system cannot reach the ongoing trials of Indonesian domestic workers because it based on the Saudi Arabian national law called Sharia, which implemented Qishash as the punishment for the murderer. One of Indonesian domestic workers who convicted to the death penalty is Ruyati binti Satubi; she is executed on June 18th, 2011 without any prior notice neither to the Embassy of Indonesia to Riyadh or Indonesian General Consulate in Jeddah. Due to the violation by Saudi Arabian government, President SBY decided to establish a moratorium on sending Indonesian domestic workers to Saudi Arabia and also be prepared for the draft of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the Placement and Protection of Indonesian domestic workers. Instead of signing Government to Government (G to G) agreement, Saudi Arabia recommended Indonesia to sign MoU with International Social Security Program (ISSP) which is a consortium of private companies because until today Saudi Arabian government has never agreed to sign any official G to G MoU regarding to domestic workers with any country.