Maids In Kuwait Seek Refugee
Madagascar Repatriates Maids Abused In Lebanon
The Dehumanization of Maids in Lebanon
Redux: Torture of Maids In Mideast
Maids Treated As Near-Slaves In the Middle East
Handicapped Seek Election Sops in India
Moises Saman for The New York Times
It is well-document - and it has been here - that maids in many Middle Eastern countries are horrifically mistreated. Imported from Asian nations, they live in a climate devoid of any legal protection. The lack of legal recourse would not be so bad if the hosting family bothered to treat them with dignity, to treat them as if they are human.
Domestic maids in Lebanon, for instance, are often such victims of abhorrent abuse - beatings, overworked, made to sleep in the balcony, ect... - that they often resort at alarming rates of committing suicide to escape the abuse.
Maids in Saudi Arabia are also horrifically abused. There are horror stories of rapes, burnings through boiling water being thrown on maids, and stuff that it too hard to read.
These maids are often maid to feel as slaves in the homes of oil rich Gulf Arabs and upper-class Lebanese due to the fact that their passports are often confiscated and pay is delayed to avoid them from fleeing in horror.
The reason they are treated this why is do to nothing less than racism by Lebanese and indulgent oil rich Gulf Arabs. They view Sri Lankas et al as inferior.
This disgusting view which leads to the abuse of fellow humans is testament to how cruel man can be. A standing monument that victims can, and often are, victimizers.
Such is the abuse that many in Kuwait, for example, are desperately seeking refugee from those awful Kuwaiti families too busy to recognize the humanity of the people who cook and clean after them:
With nowhere else to go, dozens of Nepalese maids who fled from their employers now sleep on the floor in the lobby of their embassy here, next to the visitors’ chairs. In the Philippines Embassy, more than 200 women are packed in a sweltering room, where they sleep on their luggage and pass the time singing along to Filipino crooners on television. So many runaways are sheltering in the Indonesian Embassy that some have left a packed basement and taken over a prayer room.And in the coming weeks, when Ramadan starts, the number of maids seeking protection is expected to grow, perhaps by the hundreds, straining the capacity of the improvised shelters, embassy officials say. With Kuwaiti families staying up into the early hours of the morning, some maids say they cook more, work longer hours and sleep less.
