Indonesian women freed from ordeal

Indonesian women freed from ordeal

KUALA LUMPUR (DPA): Malaysian police freed about 20 Indonesian women who had been held captive for two months in a house in Penang after telephone repairmen found their distress note, reports said yesterday.

Police stormed the two-storey terrace house Wednesday night to rescue the women, some of whom appeared weak and fatigued from lack of food, The Sun daily said.

Police believe the women were smuggled into Malaysia from Java by a syndicate either to work as housemaids or prostitutes.

Police were tipped off after the women tossed a note pleading for help to three workmen who were installing telephone lines in a lane behind the house, the reports said.

One of the men, Ahmad Wahab, said the women, some of whom were sick, wrote that they had been held for two months and were not allowed to return home.

"The women pleaded with us to break through the roof and free them. They also begged us to buy them food," he added.

Indonesians, who form the bulk of Malaysia's nearly two million legal and illegal workers, slip easily into peninsular Malaysia's relatively unguarded western coastline from nearby Sumatra island.