Redux: Torture of Maids In Mideast
The Dehumanization of Maids in Lebanon
Torture of Children Rising in Punjab
Maids In Kuwait Seek Refugee
Madagascar Repatriates Maids Abused In Lebanon
A Lebanese supporter of slained prime minister Rafiq Hariri drags her maid with her to carry the Lebanese flag.
To state that there is abuse of maids and migrant workers in the Middle East in an understatement. What takes place in the region is nothing short of a contemporary form of quasi-slavery and horrific abuse of maids which has descended into the vulgar depths of torture.
The culprit is racism. From Lebanon to the oil-rich Gulf nation, the hired help are brought from south-east Asian nations (Bangledish, Indonesia, ect...) and from African nations like Ethopia, and many Arabs look down upon such people as inferior. I should emphasize that many Arabs campaign for the human rights of the working class: setting up organizing, funding public relations campaigns, offeing help (including room-and-board) for abused workers and broadly seeking to raise awareness. But abuse it still rampant.
Victims can be, and often are, victimizers. And the Middle East is filled with such cases. Jewish Israelis brutalize Palestinians, and Arabs complain about Western racism and then exhibit for worse racism in their own lands against blacks and Asians (many of whom are fellow Muslims, not that that should matter).
Workers in most Middle Eastern countries simply have no rights. They arrive and have their passport confiscated and forced to work in absymal conditions with no right to address grivences. If that is not all, those assigned to work in homes suffer even worse. Maids are routinely beaten by their employers, even tortured (see below) and sometimes raped by some sex-straved Saudi.
In Lebanon, abuse of maids is so rampant that their dozens take their lives to avoid further hardships.
And if not such abuse, the legal system often inflicts far worse punishment on them than white Europeans. Here’s the news just from the last week:
“A Filipina maid and her Bangladeshi lover will receive 100 lashes and be deported for having sex out of wedlock in Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, a newspaper said Monday.”
“A 23-year-old Indonesian maid, who came to Saudi Arabia three months ago, has landed in a Madina hospital after members of her sponsor’s family severely beat her and burned her with a hot iron, according to an Indonesian diplomat.”
“Sri Lanka is probing allegations that one of its nationals employed in Jordan was forced to swallow nails, in the third case involving alleged torture in three months, an official said Sunday. A housemaid identified as D. M. Chandima has told the Sri Lankan diplomatic mission in Amman that her employer forced her to swallow six nails, an official at the Foreign Employment Bureau of Sri Lanka said.”
Redux: And again:
Yet another Sri Lankan maid has come forward with claims her Kuwaiti employers abused her. As she lay in recovery at a Sri Lanka hospital, V.R. Lechchmi, told Al-Jazeera her employers had driven 14 nails into her body when she asked for her salary after six months of work. "The master of the house held me down, while the mistress gave him the metal pins to put into my hands and legs," said 38-year-old Lechchmi, who had obtained her job abroad through an employment agency. "I endured the pain in silence because I thought I may be killed if I struggled.
For shame. A sad reminder that victims can, and often are, victimizers.
