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