February 25, 2026
JAKARTA – When most Indonesians hear the term “modern slavery,” they think of perbudakan in its historical sense, people in chains, legally owned by others, with no freedom at all.
In reality, modern slavery goes far beyond this. It is about an absence of choice: situations where workers lack the real freedom to stop working because of threats, coercion, deception or debt.
In recent years, its scope has been increasingly expanded to include abusive labor practices and the worst forms of child labor.
The growing importance of the issue was highlighted recently by a widely reported case involving technology company Dyson in the United Kingdom where, following…