Legal Protection for Victims of Human Trafficking Forced to Act as Online Gambling Administrators

Abstract

Human trafficking has increasingly shifted into the digital sphere, creating new forms of exploitation, including the recruitment, deception, or coercion of individuals to work as online gambling administrators. This study analyzes the forms of legal protection, their application in Indonesian criminal law enforcement, and the obstacles to protecting trafficking victims placed in such roles. It employs normative legal research using statutory and conceptual approaches. Primary, secondary, and tertiary legal materials were collected through library research and analyzed qualitatively. The study finds that a victim's technical involvement in operating online gambling cannot automatically establish criminal responsibility when recruitment fraud, threats, restrictions on freedom, document retention, debt bondage, abuse of vulnerability, or other forms of exploitation are present. Protection must include early victim identification, legal assistance, physical and psychological protection, prevention of victim criminalization, rehabilitation, repatriation, social reintegration, and restitution. Law enforcement therefore needs to distinguish carefully between principal offenders, beneficiaries of the illegal enterprise, and victims performing operational tasks under the control of trafficking networks. A victim-centered approach is essential so that online gambling enforcement can simultaneously dismantle trafficking networks and restore victims' rights in a substantive manner.