Indonesia

 Rescuers searched for survivors Sunday after a wooden ship carrying about 250 asylum seekers, many of them from the Middle East, sank off Indonesia's main island of Java. Only 33 people have been rescued so far, an official said.

Four fishing boats searched for the more than 200 missing passengers who were attempting to reach Australia, but bad weather and 4-meter- (13-foot-) high waves were hampering the efforts, said Lt. Alwi Mudzakir, a maritime police official who was heading the rescue operation.

In 1998, when Anis Hidayah was 20 and studying law in her native Indonesia, she heard a horrific story about a female compatriot who was raped by her employer while she was employed as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia.

The young woman eventually escaped, but her Saudi boss faced no criminal charges and she was never compensated for her wages or the crime.

Hidayah came from a village in East Java where half of the women in the country regularly left their husbands and children to go abroad, taking up posts as domestic workers in an effort to lift themselves out of poverty.

In a state of union address before the House of Representatives on Aug. 16, 2011, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono underlined the paramount importance of the migrant workers issue in Indonesia’s relations with other countries, in particular those receiving our migrant workers.

The President reaffirmed Indonesia’s commitment to protecting the overseas workers through diplomacy and negotiations, as well as improvement of the internal recruitment mechanisms and decisions on sending people on missions abroad.

President Susilo Bambang Yu-dhoyono polished his international image on Tuesday by claiming success on labor issues before participants of the 10th annual meeting of the International Labor Organization (ILO). In a speech that activists called “arrogant”, he said Indonesia was one of the countries in the world whose laborers were less affected by the 2008-2009 financial crisis.