Children
are being put to work on tobacco plantations in Indonesia that supply some of
the world's biggest cigarette companies, putting their health at serious risk,
Human Rights Watch warned Wednesday.
Despite
Indonesian law prohibiting child labour in hazardous industries, the rights
group documented dozens of cases of minors -- some as young as eight -- falling
ill from handling raw tobacco and mixing pesticides with their bare hands.
Much of
the tobacco harvested from the roughly 500,000 plantations across Indonesia is
for the domestic market, where smoking rates are among the world's highest.
But one
quarter of all Indonesian tobacco is exported and sold overseas by
multinational cigarette giants, Human Rights Watch child advocacy director Jo
Becker told AFP.
"A
smoker who is lighting up a Dunhill or a Lucky Strike or some other cigarette
in Europe or the United States could well be smoking a cigarette that was made
by child labour in Indonesia," Becker said.
Many
young labourers described feeling dizzy, nauseous and vomiting after long days
working in the fields, symptoms associated with "green tobacco
sickness", a type of nicotine poisoning, according to HRW's new report.
Nicotine
contained in tobacco plants is readily absorbed through the skin when handled,
and is particularly harmful for children, Becker said.
"I
vomited in the fields and my dad told me to go home and rest. I was sick for
two days," a 12-year-old girl from East Java, on the main island of Java,
told the rights watchdog, who withheld her identity.
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Enforcement difficult -
The
government is being urged to prohibit children under 18 from working with
tobacco. The standard minimum working age is 15, but Indonesia's Child
Protection Commission concedes enforcing the law is difficult.
"Unfortunately
these rules are not properly implemented in the fields," Erlinda, a senior
official at the commission, told AFP. Many Indonesians go by just one name.
None of
the major companies purchasing tobacco in Indonesia had policies
"sufficient to ensure that children are protected", Human Rights
Watch wrote in its report.
Tobacco
is purchased either directly from suppliers or via the open market, which is
far more opaque and makes tracing origin difficult.
Philip
Morris International -- which owns Indonesian cigarette giant Sampoerna -- has
shifted towards sourcing the majority of its tobacco directly in recent years,
allowing it to tackle child labour at the farm level but not rule it out
entirely.
"If
we don't know exactly who is producing that tobacco, what are the conditions,
then we cannot provide that assurance," the company's international
sustainability officer Miguel Coleta told AFP.
British
American Tobacco, which owns Indonesian subsidiary Bentoel as well as the Lucky
Strike and Dunhill cigarette brands, said it did not employ children in any
operations worldwide and warned its suppliers against doing so.
Three of
Indonesia's largest tobacco companies -- Djarum, Gudang Garam and Wismilak --
did not reply to repeated requests for comment.
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