'I've been sick in the chest': Tobacco fields take toll on Indonesian children
In a country that is the world’s fifth-largest tobacco producer, children work despite labour lawsRevealed: Child labour rampant in tobacco industry
As a young girl, Julaeping Putri loved to play, even take naps, among the fresh mounds of tobacco leaves piled around her home on the Indonesian island of Lombok.
Her mother, Nurul Huda, thought nothing of it at the time. She liked having the stacks of leaves there too – a reminder it had been a plentiful, lucrative harvest.
From as young as three, Julaeping, or Eping for short, said she would help her parents out in the field, planting the small Virginia tobacco saplings, mixing the fertiliser, watering the plants.
In harvest season, Eping and her friends would spend hours after school tying the tobacco leaves on to large poles, getting them ready for the “ovens”, village smokehouses where the leaves are smoked dry
