““Remang-remang Jakarta” by Yuyu AN Krisna, was published in 1979 and was one of the first books to examine the world of high-class prostitution in Jakarta
Last weekend’s arrest of RA, the pimp who supposedly has a network of 200 high-class celebrity prostitutes, has been all the Indonesian media seems to have been talking about recently. From gasping over the incredibly high prices RA charged clients to shocked speculation over which celebrities might have been selling their charms, it’s like the media just realized that high-class prostitution existed in Jakarta.
But anybody who is interested in that sort of thing has long heard the rumors that certain actresses, models and singers would give men their “private attention” for the right price. Those rumors have been around for a long time because they’ve been true for a long time. The secretive world of high-class celebrity prostitutes has existed in Jakarta since at least the 1970s.
We know this thanks to the work of Sinar Harapan journalist Yuyu AN Krisna, who did in-depth research into prostitution in Jakarta throughout the 1970s.
Yuyu’s work on the subject was later published as a book titled “Remang-remang Jakarta” (“Dimly Lit Jakarta”) in 1979, which was also adapted into a movie of the same name.
One of the things Yuyu highlighted in the book was the world of high-class prostitution in Jakarta. Specifically, she wrote about a wealthy high society woman who worked as a “madame” out of her house Kebayoran Baru. To cover up her activities, the woman claimed to be “selling antiques”.
The lady pimp, identified by Yuyu by the initial F, said she had 80 women in her employment. Most of them were singers, actresses or models.
“It costs Rp 100 thousand to Rp 1 million,” F told Yuyu in the book.
Yuyu was as shocked to hear those numbers now as people are now shocked to hear of RA’s clients being charged Rp 80-200 million. In the 1970s, Yuyu said low-class sex workers in Ancol might charge Rp 4,000 to Rp 7,500.
Yuyu said she interviewed some of the women who worked for F, including married women and socialites. She said many of the women did not need the money, but merely wanted a thrill as well as an escape from their boring lives.
So the big scandal of today is nothing new. In fact, many Jakartans have also forgotten the fact that prostitution was legal and regulated here for quite a long time, and somehow the city managed to survive. Hopefully once the media sensationalism dies down, reasonable people will realize that there is no simple, easy solution to the age-old problem of prostitution.
