File Photo: M.I. Najuma, who worked as a maid in the United Arab Emirates, returned to Sri Lanka after losing her husband and 5-year-old son. Najuma said her employer accused her of lying about the tragedy and granted her leave only after she threatened to kill herself.By: Dushanthy Rathinam in Sydney, Anita Joseph in Colombo and Victor Karunairajan in Toronto
A recent AFP Report described the plight of 40-year old Anista Marie, a Sri Lankan housemaid held slave for ten years without any holiday or pay. One wonders whether there is any kind of provisions in Saudi Arabia’s Sharia Law to either protect migrants employed in such demeaning and horrendous circumstances or prosecute employers who subject them to hideous and humiliating conditions.
Nearly 600,000 Sri Lankans are working in this oil-rich desert kingdom and for Sri Lanka, they are the key earners of foreign exchange. Ironically what these people earn under such ghastly and dreadful conditions obviously without any protection whatsoever from Saudi Arabian laws when their interests and rights are abused, Sri Lanka spends large sums of their earnings on arms to ensure that the rights of the Tamil-speaking minorities are trampled treating them as second class citizens of the country.
Again incongruously, the people who are earning this blood money under excruciating circumstances are from the majority community, the Sinhalese and also from the Moslem. This is because they cannot find decent and respectable employment in Sri Lanka largely for the reason, successive governments of Sri Lanka have only been preoccupied with keeping the Tamil-speaking people denied of their rights to be on par with the majority Sinhalese and in a state of war against them.
But the racial issue is a wild steed on which certain politicians are riding and holding the country to ransom. Even more pronounced and absolutely intolerable is the high scale corruption that has become endemic in the country and along with it, the attendant violence of free for all ransom-seeking kidnappings, rapes and killings. Just a few days ago, the Katunayake Police chose to go on a wild escapade to intimidate and sexually harass women workers of the Free Trade Zone in the vicinity of the International Airport.
Obligations and decencies have collapsed
When the Government of Sri Lanka cannot ensure the rights of its workers overseas with suitable arrangements with the countries involved and Saudi Arabia in particular, and at the same time denies fundamental rights to its own people in the country and where even the Sinhalese majority are not assured of safety and security, one wonders whether all governmental obligations and decencies have collapsed leaving only the hyenas to prowl.
In the case of Anista Marie who is from Chilaw, according to a Saudi newspaper, she had called its office and pleaded with them to rescue her from her ten-year pitiless and cruel confinement. According to the AFP Report, "The Arab News said that it received the cry for help from Anista Marie, who left the coastal town of Chilaw in Sri Lanka a decade ago to work in a house in the Saudi capital, Riyadh."
She added: "When I came here I was 30 years of age. Now I am 40 and I have never taken holiday leave, nor have I been paid in the past eight years," Marie told the English language daily by telephone. It appears whenever she asked them to allow her to return home and visit her four children or even to be paid, her employers would beat her up.
"They assault me when I say that I want to go home. It's worse when I talk about salary," she said. "Let me go home and see my children and die on my soil," she added. According to the newspaper the Sri Lankan Embassy had assured they would contact Saudi officials about Marie's case.
We have just had information that Anista Marie has been freed from her misery and she wants to get back home as soon as possible. Her desire to get back to her children is more intense than staying back in the desert kingdom to press criminal charges against her employer. Meanwhile more than a thousand Sri Lankan expatriates in Saudi Arabia brought a cheer for Anista Marie by holding a well-wishing party for her at the Sri Lankan Embassy and presented her with a purse of Saudi Riyals 6,500. Her unpaid salary and other dues are said to be about SR33, 000 and Sri Lankan Embassy officials, armed with her Power of Attorney, have offered to pursue this matter.
According to Arab News: Anista Marie’s sponsor has not been officially charged with any crime and it is unknown if she will ever be taken to court for allegations of false imprisonment or whether she would be compelled to pay her eight years’ worth of unpaid wages if found guilty. When the Police rescued Anista Marie her employer refused to hand over her passport; such was her attitude.
Shanti Menike Herath
Two years ago, another maid Shanti Menike Herath from Kurunegala was rescued from a forced six-year slave confinement after her 22-year old son reported that he had not heard from her for three years. The family that employed her kept her totally imprisoned without any communication outside and was also prevented from writing or receiving letters.
Her story is the same sad and unfortunate one as many other housemaids in Saudi Arabia – Shanti arrived in 1999 so that she could have the opportunity to earn money to educate her three children. She was in a situation where her husband was unable to do so due to health reasons, thus she had become the bread winner for her family.
Repeatedly in recent years, Human Rights groups have been deeply concerned and have raised strong criticisms against the Saudi Arabian state, whose ultraconservative values belong to another age in the distant past. It certainly does not reckon its migrant workers, literally thousands of them from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh as human beings. Many of them are employed as domestic workers and drivers. This state also practices blatant racial discrimination treating those employed from the west obviously in key positions as a different class of people enjoying unbelievable standards of luxury and splendour.
Surely the Holy Koran cannot sanction such a treatment especially in a country that has the most sacred Islamic shrine and which is visited by millions of pilgrims every year. This paradox is absolutely incomprehensible and unfathomable.
Rizana Naffeek
Apart from Anista Marie’s case, another one that has drawn worldwide trepidation, shock and concern is that of the 19-year old Rizana Naffeek condemned to be beheaded all because a 4-month old child she was asked to bottle-feed obviously died of choking on milk, one of the known causes of infant mortality. Her employer, in the first case, was not allowed to employ her as a child minder according to Saudi Arabian labour laws. Rizana was never trained in child care; she was employed as a domestic aid whose responsibility was to dust and clean the house, nothing more.
Even in respect of her age, her agent had falsified it to have her sent to Saudi Arabia. Fortunately when the Government of Sri Lanka was dilly-dallying with her appeal to a higher court, the Asian Human Rights Watch stepped in and made the appeal possible. The Rizana Naffeek’s case is now before the Court of Appeal and we understand one of Sri Lanka’s senior ministers, Mr Keheliya Rambukwella has plans to meet officials in Saudi Arabia to ensure Rizana Naffeek’s rights are upheld. We also understand that Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister Hussein Bhaila visited Saudi Arabia last month and met religious leaders and senior members of the dead baby's tribe, who promised to approach the baby's parents to try to secure a pardon.
Should that be realized, she will walk out of her holding jail free and return to her home in Mutur, Eastern Province and this teenager is innocent.
Anista Marie, Shanti Herath and Rizana Naffeek are only just three names of the hundreds of Sri Lanka women who are being physically, financially and mentally abused in their positions as housemaids. Some of these cases are aggravated by the fact there is little or no help from their mother countries. This situation has to change without any delay.
A recent AFP Report described the plight of 40-year old Anista Marie, a Sri Lankan housemaid held slave for ten years without any holiday or pay. One wonders whether there is any kind of provisions in Saudi Arabia’s Sharia Law to either protect migrants employed in such demeaning and horrendous circumstances or prosecute employers who subject them to hideous and humiliating conditions.
Nearly 600,000 Sri Lankans are working in this oil-rich desert kingdom and for Sri Lanka, they are the key earners of foreign exchange. Ironically what these people earn under such ghastly and dreadful conditions obviously without any protection whatsoever from Saudi Arabian laws when their interests and rights are abused, Sri Lanka spends large sums of their earnings on arms to ensure that the rights of the Tamil-speaking minorities are trampled treating them as second class citizens of the country.
Again incongruously, the people who are earning this blood money under excruciating circumstances are from the majority community, the Sinhalese and also from the Moslem. This is because they cannot find decent and respectable employment in Sri Lanka largely for the reason, successive governments of Sri Lanka have only been preoccupied with keeping the Tamil-speaking people denied of their rights to be on par with the majority Sinhalese and in a state of war against them.
But the racial issue is a wild steed on which certain politicians are riding and holding the country to ransom. Even more pronounced and absolutely intolerable is the high scale corruption that has become endemic in the country and along with it, the attendant violence of free for all ransom-seeking kidnappings, rapes and killings. Just a few days ago, the Katunayake Police chose to go on a wild escapade to intimidate and sexually harass women workers of the Free Trade Zone in the vicinity of the International Airport.
Obligations and decencies have collapsed
When the Government of Sri Lanka cannot ensure the rights of its workers overseas with suitable arrangements with the countries involved and Saudi Arabia in particular, and at the same time denies fundamental rights to its own people in the country and where even the Sinhalese majority are not assured of safety and security, one wonders whether all governmental obligations and decencies have collapsed leaving only the hyenas to prowl.
In the case of Anista Marie who is from Chilaw, according to a Saudi newspaper, she had called its office and pleaded with them to rescue her from her ten-year pitiless and cruel confinement. According to the AFP Report, "The Arab News said that it received the cry for help from Anista Marie, who left the coastal town of Chilaw in Sri Lanka a decade ago to work in a house in the Saudi capital, Riyadh."
She added: "When I came here I was 30 years of age. Now I am 40 and I have never taken holiday leave, nor have I been paid in the past eight years," Marie told the English language daily by telephone. It appears whenever she asked them to allow her to return home and visit her four children or even to be paid, her employers would beat her up.
"They assault me when I say that I want to go home. It's worse when I talk about salary," she said. "Let me go home and see my children and die on my soil," she added. According to the newspaper the Sri Lankan Embassy had assured they would contact Saudi officials about Marie's case.
We have just had information that Anista Marie has been freed from her misery and she wants to get back home as soon as possible. Her desire to get back to her children is more intense than staying back in the desert kingdom to press criminal charges against her employer. Meanwhile more than a thousand Sri Lankan expatriates in Saudi Arabia brought a cheer for Anista Marie by holding a well-wishing party for her at the Sri Lankan Embassy and presented her with a purse of Saudi Riyals 6,500. Her unpaid salary and other dues are said to be about SR33, 000 and Sri Lankan Embassy officials, armed with her Power of Attorney, have offered to pursue this matter.
According to Arab News: Anista Marie’s sponsor has not been officially charged with any crime and it is unknown if she will ever be taken to court for allegations of false imprisonment or whether she would be compelled to pay her eight years’ worth of unpaid wages if found guilty. When the Police rescued Anista Marie her employer refused to hand over her passport; such was her attitude.
Shanti Menike Herath
Two years ago, another maid Shanti Menike Herath from Kurunegala was rescued from a forced six-year slave confinement after her 22-year old son reported that he had not heard from her for three years. The family that employed her kept her totally imprisoned without any communication outside and was also prevented from writing or receiving letters.
Her story is the same sad and unfortunate one as many other housemaids in Saudi Arabia – Shanti arrived in 1999 so that she could have the opportunity to earn money to educate her three children. She was in a situation where her husband was unable to do so due to health reasons, thus she had become the bread winner for her family.
Repeatedly in recent years, Human Rights groups have been deeply concerned and have raised strong criticisms against the Saudi Arabian state, whose ultraconservative values belong to another age in the distant past. It certainly does not reckon its migrant workers, literally thousands of them from Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh as human beings. Many of them are employed as domestic workers and drivers. This state also practices blatant racial discrimination treating those employed from the west obviously in key positions as a different class of people enjoying unbelievable standards of luxury and splendour.
Surely the Holy Koran cannot sanction such a treatment especially in a country that has the most sacred Islamic shrine and which is visited by millions of pilgrims every year. This paradox is absolutely incomprehensible and unfathomable.
Rizana Naffeek
Apart from Anista Marie’s case, another one that has drawn worldwide trepidation, shock and concern is that of the 19-year old Rizana Naffeek condemned to be beheaded all because a 4-month old child she was asked to bottle-feed obviously died of choking on milk, one of the known causes of infant mortality. Her employer, in the first case, was not allowed to employ her as a child minder according to Saudi Arabian labour laws. Rizana was never trained in child care; she was employed as a domestic aid whose responsibility was to dust and clean the house, nothing more.
Even in respect of her age, her agent had falsified it to have her sent to Saudi Arabia. Fortunately when the Government of Sri Lanka was dilly-dallying with her appeal to a higher court, the Asian Human Rights Watch stepped in and made the appeal possible. The Rizana Naffeek’s case is now before the Court of Appeal and we understand one of Sri Lanka’s senior ministers, Mr Keheliya Rambukwella has plans to meet officials in Saudi Arabia to ensure Rizana Naffeek’s rights are upheld. We also understand that Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister Hussein Bhaila visited Saudi Arabia last month and met religious leaders and senior members of the dead baby's tribe, who promised to approach the baby's parents to try to secure a pardon.
Should that be realized, she will walk out of her holding jail free and return to her home in Mutur, Eastern Province and this teenager is innocent.
Anista Marie, Shanti Herath and Rizana Naffeek are only just three names of the hundreds of Sri Lanka women who are being physically, financially and mentally abused in their positions as housemaids. Some of these cases are aggravated by the fact there is little or no help from their mother countries. This situation has to change without any delay.
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