New Maid Abuse Case in Arab State Prompts Fresh Calls for Protection

Jakarta Globe, January 31, 2011

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Rights advocates said on Sunday that the government needed to step up its efforts to protect Indonesian migrant workers after yet another story of abuse emerged over the weekend.

Armayeh Binti Sanuri, 20, a maid working in Saudi Arabia, was reportedly rushed to a hospital in Medina, in the Arab state’s west, after sustaining injuries allegedly inflicted by her employers.

“Her employers poured hot water on her,” said Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, a member of House of Representatives Commission IX, which deals with population and labor issues.

“But thank God she will not have to endure that anymore because she managed to escape,” Rieke told news portal Detik.com.

The lawmaker, from the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), said Armayeh had been transferred to King Fahd Hospital in Jeddah because of the seriousness of her injuries.

She said Armayeh, who is originally from Pontianak, West Kalimantan, had been working in Saudi Arabia for three months.

The woman, Rieke added, was able to escape when her employers went out and left the house unlocked.

Anis Hidayah, the executive director of Migrant Care, urged the government “not to respond to the case in an ad hoc manner.” She said a team was needed to push for more severe punishments for abusive employers.

“This is the result of the lack of a system in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia to protect migrant workers,” she said on Sunday.

“They have to learn from Sumiati’s case in which her former employer was only sentenced to three years in prison,” she said, referring to another abused migrant worker in Saudi Arabia.

Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, 23, made headlines when pictures of her battered face surfaced in November. She was said to have suffered internal bleeding and broken bones after her employer’s wife burned her with an iron and attacked her with scissors.

The woman was found guilty of assaulting Sumiati and was sentenced to three years in prison under the Arab state’s newly enacted royal decree against human trafficking. Lawyers for the Indonesian government said they would appeal the verdict.

In December, an Indonesian maid jumped from the second floor of her employer’s house in Medina to escape from alleged abuse.

Two weeks before that, an Indonesian maid in Jeddah died after falling from a third-floor apartment in a similar attempt.