Saturday November 17, 2007, 11:24 pm
The woman in the second picture is Sushar Rosky, born 1987, as she hangs from the balcony of the apartment in which she worked as a maid for only 20 days in Sidon, Lebanon. She hung herself with bits of clothe carefully tied together in 2005. No investigation was conducted into the circumstances leading up to her death.

Saturday November 17, 2007, 11:40 pm
Ten (or twenty) years later, little has changed. According to some reports, the number of such domestic workers in Lebanon from Sri Lanka alone has risen to around 80,000 people who come to the country to earn money for their families back home. In many cases, they have even left children behind. Their plight still tends to be overlooked by international human rights organizations, and their abuse or death is rarely given more than a few lines in the Arabic press.
http://www.migrant-rights.org/2007/03/29/the-sad-plight-of-migrant-domestic-workers-in-lebanon/

The report from Human Rights Watch that I have posted here is the first report from a major NGO on this terrible subject, although another group, Migrant Rights in the Middle East, has been covering these tragic stories for years & it is clear that not only women from Sri Lanka are victimized by Middle Eastern employers, but Indonesians or any other foreign woman is prey to such treatment when she accepts work as a maid. These women come from poor countries and are forced to migrate to find work, which makes them particularly vulnerable. I am posting below some of the dreadful stories from their site :
http://www.migrant-rights.org/category/abusive-employers/

BBC reports:
Gulf states are failing to curb serious abuses of Sri Lankan migrant workers employed as maids in their countries, a Human Rights Watch report has said.

The US-based group says abuse of maids is rampant in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon.

Employers routinely confiscate domestic workers’ passports and confine them to the workplace, the rights group says.

The UAE has denied the charges, saying Human Rights Watch has ignored its efforts to improve workers’ conditions.

More than 660,000 Sri Lankan women work abroad as maids, nearly 90% of them in the Gulf countries.
Read the rest of the story here.

Filipino worker beaten/locked up for refusing to be a maid
Friday, October 26th, 2007
According to Arab News, a middle-aged Filipino woman was beaten up because she refused to be a maid/slave:

Officials at the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah yesterday said Myrna Salvador was admitted to Dr. Baksh Hospital in the Mina district of the city after suffering a fractured spine and hip. She was brought to the hospital on Wednesday afternoon by her employer’s driver and another worker.

Salvador, a single mother, left her two young children with relatives in the northern Philippine province of Bulacan when she was recruited by Samba Services agency to work at a beauty parlor owned by her employer, Malika Al-Otaibi, in Jeddah for a salary of SR1,500 a month.

This mistreatment is truly disgusting, and let’s remember that most of such cases don’t even make it to the media so we’ve yet to hear the worst of these stories.
You can read the rest of the report here.

There is still no NGO that is active towards this issue, partly due to lack of resources/funds and partly because not many people actually care to help. What a sad reality to deal with, and what’s worse is that our silence/inactivity is putting even more lives at risk.

We should really do something. For months we have been saying this with no one offering their help in putting together an effective campaign to end this or at least increase awareness on what’s happening. There is no way that people are truly aware of this yet allowing it to happen, which is just as bad as actually taking part in what we consider to be a serious crime against humanity. If we make enough people aware of this we can make a difference.

Tortured maid in serious condition after amputation of her limbs
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
From a report this morning on Gulf News:

Riyadh: An Indonesian housemaid is in serious condition following amputation of both her hands and feet after a month-long torture by her employers, said a member of the Saudi National Society for Human Rights.

Dr Nora Al Jumaih, member of the monitoring and follow-up committee at the Saudi National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said in press statements yesterday that she would meet the chairman of the monitoring committee at NSHR to brief him on the case of the Indonesian maid.

She added that a report on the condition of the Indonesian housemaid was prepared and will be handed over to NSHR.

The Indonesian housemaid, whose name was not given, was earlier admitted to the Riyadh Medical Complex, popularly known as Shimaisy Hospital, after being severely beaten for almost one month by her employers, a Saudi man and his wife. The doctors in hospital decided to amputate her hands and feet because of gangrene.
Read the rest of the very disturbing report here.

8 Years of Forced Labor
Thursday, September 6th, 2007

“I still cannot believe that I am out of this ordeal that I have undergone for the past 10 years,” said Anista Marie, 40, who since 1999 hasn’t received her salary. Marie called up Arab News a little over 3 weeks ago saying she has been imprisoned and abused in the home of her sponsor for the past decade. She was rescued at a villa in the Khansalallilah district in Riyadh, about 12 km from the city center.

According to Marie, the household consisted of three women with four teenage daughters. “There were no men in the house,” she said. “They assaulted me when I would say that I wanted to go home. It was worse when I talked about the salary.”

“I do not want anything now but to fly home to see my children who have been suffering like orphans without their parents,” said the mother of four, whose husband had passed away during this time. She said that she was paid for the first two years of her employment, and she was allowed to go out with the family. Under the impression that her sponsor would let her visit her family back home, she bought clothes for her children planning for such a trip. “Back then I bought things for my children,” she said. “They’re still packed in two suitcases and the clothes can’t be used by my children now because they’ve grown out of them.”

Arab News
Update: Here is the latest on Anista Marie’s case.

2 Indonesian Maids Beaten to Death
Monday, August 6th, 2007
The Arab News service reports yet another horrific story from Saudi Arabia this morning:

JEDDAH, 6 August 2007 — Two Indonesian maids were beaten to death and two others remain in the intensive care unit at a Riyadh hospital in an assault authorities believe was committed by the son of the maids’ employer. The 17-year-old suspect in the double-homicide and assault is reportedly being held in a mental hospital while police have detained his father.

The employer’s name was provided to Arab News by hospital staff, but is being withheld until it can be corroborated with authorities. The crime took place in the suburban community of Aflaj.

According to hospital staff, the police believe the suspect smashed the women against walls and beat them with an igal (the black headband used to hold down the shumag, the Bedouin headdress commonly worn by Saudi men) because he thought they were possessed by the devil and performing witchcraft on him.

Two of the women were pronounced dead on arrival at Aflaj General Hospital at about 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. The surviving assault victims were identified as Romini Shurti, 30, and Tari Bibitarfin, 27.

The survivors are conscious but are too sore to move, the nurse said, adding that it would take at least two weeks for them to recover. “We can’t find any normal skin on them,” a nurse at the hospital told Arab News. “It’s all red and blue and swollen.”

Speaking in broken Arabic, Bibitarfin told Arab News that the youth (one of nine siblings) attacked them one by one while they were working and was saying they “had the devil inside” and that they “did magic”. The large household is located in a suburban area.

Bibitarfin was unable to explain where the other members of the family were when the assault took place. She has been working at this household for about 18 months with no issues with the family members.

Police are investigating the crime. It is unclear who brought the maids to the hospital, though hospital staff reported that the bodies arrived first. The Indonesian Embassy did not wish to comment yesterday.

Read article here.

Al Jazeera reports - Maids in a living hell
Wednesday, August 1st, 2007

Thousands of Asian women leave their homes each year to seek better jobs abroad as domestic workers.

Many of them are treated well, but some – subjected to physical and mental abuse – endure a living hell.

Most who venture abroad as domestic workers come from Indonesia and the Philippines, with Indonesia alone recording 2.5m workers, some of them as young as 12.

These women earn a wage of $100 a month, but the combined worth of their remittances adds up to an estimated $5.4bn a year.

The jobs take the workers to other Asian countries and to the Middle East, where they often find themselves unprotected by local labour laws, leaving the women open to exploitation.

At a school for maids near the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, women take the first step to escape from unemployment and poverty by enrolling on courses in housework.

[…]

They are among an estimated 700,000 Indonesians, 80 per cent of them women, who embark on a journey abroad each year leaving behind partners and children.

But their journey ends in Terminal 3 – specially designated for returning migrant workers – at Jakarta’s international airport.

Indonesian officials say an increasing number of domestic workers are returning home without having been paid, or much worse. One case is that of a 20-year-old woman, her name withdrawn to protect her identity, who worked as a maid in Kuwait.

She claimed the father and son of the household had raped her.

She said her hands were black from exposure to chlorine used to clean toilets without gloves.

The worst cases of maid abuse can be found at Jakarta’s police hospital, such as a woman with scars she claims were inflicted by her female employer in Kuwait because she worked too slowly.

“My arm and my buttock were ironed. Then my head was hit with a metal bar, my hair was cut, and my eyes were poked,” she told Al Jazeera.

The Migrant Care organisation in Jakarta says such reports are becoming all too familiar, and are quickly filling up their database of abuse claims.

Read full article here.

The links to all of the full stories are active on the Migrant Rights site:
http://www.migrant-rights.org/category/abusive-employers/