Nuns take to Jakarta streets, warn online scams fuel trafficking- UCA News

Nuns take to Jakarta streets, warn online scams fuel trafficking
About 10,000 Indonesians lured into online scam operations in 10 countries from 2020 to end of 2025, Foreign Ministry says

Nuns and rights activists joined the Talitha Kum Walk & Talkin Jakarta on Aug. 2. (Photo supplied)

Catholic nuns took to the streets of Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, to raise awareness about scammers increasingly using online job advertisements to lure people into human trafficking networks across Southeast Asia

The Aug. 2 campaign combined a mass walk with an interactive talk show featuring humanitarian activist Inaya Wahid, days after the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons on July 30

The program, called ‘Talitha Kum Walk and Talk: Walking Together and Speaking Out Against Human Trafficking,’ was organized by Talitha Kum Indonesia’s Jakarta network and 43 other civil society groups

The event echoed this year’s United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC)’s campaign theme, ‘Trapped Behind the Scam,’ which highlights how traffickers deceive victims through high-paying fake job advertisements on social media

Ursuline Sister Irena Handayani, coordinator of Talitha Kum’s Jakarta network, said the rise of online scams shows that trafficking is no longer limited to conventional recruitment for domestic work or factory jobs

“Online scam cases are a concern because many victims initially do not realize they are being drawn into a human trafficking network,” she told UCA News

Victims are often promised high-paying jobs in technology, digital services, marketing or administration, Handayani said, adding that they are forced by transnational criminal syndicates to run online fraud operations after arriving in destination countries, particularly in Southeast Asia

“They experience exploitation, confinement, threats, violence, confiscation of documents and are forced to scam others,” the nun said

Handayani said victims often face a double burden: they are exploited by criminal networks but may also be treated as offenders because they were forced to take part in fraud schemes

Young workers, recent graduates, laid-off workers, migrant workers and people with limited access to safe migration information and digital literacy are among the most vulnerable, she said

Recent cases show the scale of the problem. Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said about 10,000 Indonesians were indicated to have been involved in online scam operations in 10 countries from 2020 to the end of 2025, with 1,500 verified as trafficking victims

Indonesia also repatriated 1,203 citizens from online scam compounds in Myanmar through Thailand between Feb. 20 and July 16

The International Organization for Migration said it has assisted more than 660 trafficking victims linked to online scam operations in Indonesia since 2022

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  By Courtney Mares, OSV News| Vatican City
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  By UCA News reporter| Vatican City
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  By Vatican News, OSV News| Vatican City

Meanwhile, the women’s empowerment ministry recorded more than 2,000 identified trafficking victims between 2021 and June 2025, most of them women and girls

“These figures are believed to be only a small part of the actual cases, considering that trafficking in persons remains an iceberg phenomenon, with far fewer cases revealed than the reality on the ground,” Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection Minister Arifah Fauzi said in a statement

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