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Feraldo “Aldo” Saragi is a human rights activist who fights for the rights of sex workers and other marginalized groups in Indonesia. He founded a nonprofit group dedicated to social change and has spoken at the United Nations in New York about the unjust criminalization of sex workers. It’s a personal issue for Aldo. Although he is passionate about defending the rights of others, he makes no secret of the fact that he is a sex worker himself.

The path that led Aldo to sex work, and eventually human rights activism, started with the Asian financial crisis.

Born to a poor family from Pematangsiantar, North Sumatra, he had to move to South Korea in 1995 to work as a migrant laborer for two years to save up enough money to attend a private university in Jakarta. While in university, he also worked as a laborer for a private company to support himself. But when the financial crisis hit the country in 1998, he lost his job and his ability to pay for his schooling.

“It happened everywhere. A lot of companies shut down, so it was an extremely hard time. Getting another job was impossible,” the 35-year-old said. “On the other hand, the show must go on. Life keeps on rolling, no matter what.”

Confused, Aldo said he decided he had to do something in order to survive. “Inspired” by an article he read in a lifestyle magazine about one spot in the capital where male sex workers hung out, he decided to join them.

“The situation made it difficult for me to choose. And really, at that time there was no other choice if you wanted to survive,” he said.

Although it was not what he wanted to do, Aldo began his new profession as a sex worker, trading his services for anywhere between Rp 150,000 ($18) and Rp 200,000 ($23) per client.

“But I didn’t have clients every day. There were just too many competitors and, with a lot of younger men joining, it made it even harder,” he said.

Aldo said it took about two years before he was able to make peace with himself and what he did for a living.

“It was not easy to get to the stage where I could get over my internal conflict. I went through a lot of things to compensate, including seeking comfort in drugs,” he said.

Twelve years have passed, and Aldo still does sex work. But he now considers himself an “empowered sex worker.”

“I have a good bargaining position where I can, for example, choose not to take clients who refuse to use condoms when having sex. I am not financially desperate, like I was before,” he said.

Even as Aldo’s situation improved, he became more and more concerned about the way the government treated sex workers. He become increasingly involved in activism and in 2009, together with some friends, he founded the Indonesia Social Changes Organization (OPSI).

According to Aldo, the group represents and advocates for marginalized groups such as sex workers, homosexuals, transvestites, people with HIV/AIDS and drugs addicts. OPSI also addresses issues of discrimination and human rights violations caused by, among other things, government institutions and policies.

“For example, regional laws that call for the demolition of prostitution complexes. But the question is, does that solve all the problems? Those sex workers will find other ways to keep doing what they do because this is their livelihood, which helps them feed their babies, pay for their children’s school tuition and so on,” he said.

“The prostitution complex may be demolished, and, as a result, sex workers go to narrow alleys or boarding houses to look for clients. This is even more dangerous because the spread of HIV/AIDS is out of control.”

There are currently around 1,500 sex workers registered as members of the OPSI, Aldo said, spread across 22 provinces. That number, he said, includes males, females and transvestites, although the majority of the organization’s members are female.

Aldo was in New York in April and June to speak at the United Nations on the issue of sex workers’ rights.

“I was a speaker at the UN Civil Society Hearing, which was part of their preparations for a high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS policy,” Aldo said. “I was representing sex workers in Asia Pacific, not only Indonesia. My presentation was on ‘decriminalizing key affected populations,’ specifically sex workers.”

Criminalizing sex workers is not a solution to the problem of HIV/AIDS, he said. It only makes their situation worse, since then they have no bargaining power.

“The UN made ‘zero new infections, zero discrimination and zero HIV/AIDS-related deaths’ one of their Millennium Development Goals. How can they reach that goal by 2015 if criminalization still occurs?” he asked.

Labeling female prostitutes wanita tuna susila, or women without morality, is also another form of criminalization and a violation of human rights, he said. The term WTS, he said, is still frequently used at the Ministry of Social Affairs. This, he said, is one of the things his organization has been fighting against.

“We urge [the government] to take sex workers out of the discrimination box and run programs that treat them like human beings. Look at how the officers treat sex workers during raids. That is not human at all,” he said. “We have been trying to get sex workers accepted by the government. That is all we want.”

The recognition of sex workers by the government will help combat HIV/AIDS, he said. When sex workers are recognized, the government will have the ability and authority to offer programs such as health reproduction awareness campaigns or programs encouraging the use of condoms in prostitution complexes.

Aldo said Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih shared his concerns. In a book, Endang wrote about her experiences working with sex workers in North Jakarta’s Kramat Tunggak prostitution complex, which was tolerated by the government for years until it was turned into an Islamic center.

Endang, Aldo said, stated in her book that turning the red-light district into a religious center did not solve any problems.

“She said that there are now houses around the [Islamic] center where prostitution continues to takes place,” he said. “When regulated, not only would we be able to reach everyone involved in awareness campaigns, but it could also create other job opportunities in the area, such as parking attendants, food vendors, and more.”

The challenges, however, do not only come from the government and outside institutions.

“Internal conflicts are also a part of the challenges of our work,” he said. “Religious values and cultural norms have managed to make them [sex workers] believe that they are society’s trash. So getting beaten up by the police or public order officers is considered ‘natural’ because they believe they deserve that.”

Aldo admitted that he sometimes felt exhausted from all of his efforts to get sex workers more rights and recognition from the government.

“But I can’t stop here. I believe that the state will never give you your rights, you have to take them. You have to fight for them,” he said.

“Few people realize that human rights apply to everybody equally — they don’t say, ‘Everyone except sex workers, gay and transvestites.’ ”