Bruised and bandaged, a maid's tale of Saudi abuse
Bruised and bandaged, a maid's tale of Saudi abuse
Dominic Evans, Reuters/Riyadh
Nur Miyati lies on a Saudi hospital bed, her hands bandaged, her toes black from gangrene and her body still marked with bruises.
Whispering hoarsely, the 22-year-old Indonesian housemaid tells of the abuse she says she suffered at the hands of her employer, who beat her when she asked for her salary and locked her up when he left the house.
She became so ill that when he finally brought her to a Riyadh hospital -- nurses say he warned her to say she hurt herself falling over -- doctors feared they might have to amputate part of her foot.
"Assault. Gangrene both hands and legs," says a medical report hanging above her bed. Another lists bruising around Miyati's eyes, lips, shoulders, ears and the sole of one foot.
Miyati is one of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians who leave home to work in Saudi Arabia, part of a six-million strong foreign labor force in the oil-rich Gulf state that includes workers from India, the Philippines, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Saudi officials say instances of alleged abuse like hers are isolated cases that are fully investigated. Indonesian diplomats say they receive between 10 and 15 complaints a day of mistreatment, withholding salaries and sexual harassment.
Four days after being admitted to the hospital, Miyati was too weak to explain exactly what happened to her. But medical staff and diplomats have pieced together parts of her story.
The frail woman from Sumbawa island, West Nusa Tenggara province, had worked for eighteen months in Riyadh for a monthly salary of 600 riyals (US$160) -- money she never received.
"The first time she asked for her salary, that's when it started," said Mohamad Sugiarto, labor attache at the Indonesian embassy in Riyadh. "It wasn't only the man, the wife beat her too."
She developed gangrene in her hands and feet, perhaps from infected cuts or bruises, a nurse said. When the gangrene began to smell unpleasant, the family made her sleep in a bathroom outside the main house, he said. For a month, they locked her up whenever they went out.
Complaints of torture Sugiarto said 4,582 Indonesians complained of mistreatment by their employers in Saudi Arabia last year. Nearly a quarter said they had not been paid. Another 800 complained of "torture or maltreatment" and 400 said they were sexually harassed.
Those numbers reflected less than one percent of the 600,000 Indonesians, most of them housemaids, working in Saudi Arabia.
All but a tiny fraction of the cases were "resolved" by the embassy, working with Saudi officials, he said.
"I hope the others are well-treated," Sugiarto added. "But we only hear about those who come to the embassy. We don't know about the others who might have run away".
A report by U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said last July that many of the millions of foreign laborers in Saudi Arabia work under conditions that resemble slavery, and said the situation of women migrant workers was of particular concern.
It blamed "unscrupulous private employers and sponsors as well as Saudi authorities" for what it said were cases of extreme labor exploitation.
Saudi Arabia said the report exaggerated the experience of a few of the six million foreigners working in the kingdom, and noted that families around the world depend on remittances from those workers.
Violations are referred to labor committees that enforce Saudi Arabia's employment laws, officials said, and those committees investigated 7,000 complaints in 2003. "All are taken seriously," said Labor Minister Ghazi Algosaibi.
Sugiarto said one case he dealt with in the western city of Jeddah involved a woman who was raped and beaten until she died. Her employers paid her family around $15,000 compensation.
"Cases like this never come to court -- even killings," he said. "They finish up by giving money".
Under the version of Islamic Sharia law practiced in Saudi Arabia, families of victims can forgive their killers and spare them punishment -- usually public beheading for murder or rape.
"If someone is treated so badly that they die, the employer comes directly to Indonesia to get a letter of forgiveness (from the family)," he said. "If a woman dies (they pay) 50,000 riyals ($13,000) and a male 100,000 riyals ($26,000). That's the standard for any Indian, Filipino or Indonesian."
Sugiarto said his country imposed a one-month moratorium in March on sending workers to Saudi Arabia and four other Arab countries -- Kuwait, Jordan, Oman and the United Arab Emirates -- while it improved ways of keeping track and protecting Indonesians in those countries.
REUTERS
GetRTR 3.00 -- MAR 30, 2005 08:59:53