KL family beats maid over baby's mosquito bite

KL family beats maid over baby's mosquito bite

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): The Malaysian employers of an
Indonesian maid beat her with a broomstick because a mosquito bit
their baby, reports said Wednesday.

In the latest in a series of maid abuse cases which have
shocked many Malaysians, newspapers highlighted the plight of 26-
year-old Sri Mulyati Hamid.

The reports carried photos of scars, allegedly inflicted by
the employers, on the woman's back.

Mulyati was quoted by the Sun as saying at a news conference
on Tuesday that the baby's mother beat her with a broomstick when
she saw the mosquito bite. The conference was organized by the
Women's Aid Organization (WAO) where she has taken refuge.

She said the baby's father also kicked and beat her when he
arrived home.

The maid said the couple hit her with a variety of objects --
a cane, a walking stick, a broom, a mop, shoes, a plate and a
feather duster.

"The wife used a rotan (bamboo cane), a walking stick, a
broom, a mop, shoes, plates and a feather duster to beat me until
I bled," Mulyati was quoted as saying by the Star daily.

She alleged that her woman employer also called her "pig" and
"dog" and only fed her a packet of instant noodles once a day.

The man, an airline engineer, kicked and slapped her and the
wife pinched her nipples, she said.

Mulyati, who left her employers last month, said the windows
of the house in a Kuala Lumpur suburb were kept shut so no one
would hear her cries.

"My employer forced me to water the plants and do other chores
outside at 2 a.m. so that my bruises would not be seen. She said
if anyone found out, she would cut herself with a knife and blame
it on me," the Indonesian maid said.

Frightened, she ran away and was taken by a sympathetic
passerby to the police, where she was sent to WAO which offers
shelter to battered foreign maids.

WAO executive secretary Ivy Josiah said the husband was
arrested and was out on police bail. She said her organization
was disturbed by persistent cases of attacks on maids.

The government last month announced new safeguards for foreign
Muslim maids which includes having non-Muslim employers hiring
foreign Muslim maids to sign a pledge to allow them religious
privileges.

Rules on hiring Filipinas and Sri Lankans were eased to curb a
series of attacks in recent months on maids from mainly Muslim
Indonesia.

In one case an Indonesian maid said her boss "branded" her
hand with a burning incense stick after accusing her of theft.

Another Indonesian was admitted to a hospital intensive care
unit after her female employer allegedly hit her on the head with
a rock. The employer, like several others, has been charged.

Some 20,000 maids ran away from their employers in recent
years, according to immigration authorities who did not specify
the time period.

There are 162,868 foreign maids in the country, mostly from
neighboring Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia.

Ivy Josiah said Mulyati's case was the sixth handled by her
organization since 1995 but none of the employers were convicted
because the Indonesian maids, who were required to testify, were
forced to return home when their work permits expired.

She recommended that the government allow abused maids
awaiting court cases to remain in Malaysia, and the authorities
also issue a guidebook on the rights of domestic workers to
employers, as is done in Singapore.