Outcry After Indonesian Maid Suffers Violent Abuse In Saudi Arabia
Jakarta, Indonesia (AHN) – A 23-year-old Indonesian maid is being treated in a hospital in Saudi Arabia after her employers cut off part of her lips, burned her body with a hot iron, fractured her finger and beat her legs to the point that she could hardly walk.
From her hospital bed in Medina, Sumiati appealed via mobile phone on Friday to her parents in East Nusa Tenggara to bring her home. Meanwhile, enraged Indonesians protested in front of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Jakarta.
Reports of Sumiati’s mutilation and another Indonesian maid who was tortured to death and her body dumped in a bin in Saudi Arabia have caused an uproar in Indonesia and prompted President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to call for a review of the country’s policy of sending citizens to work in Middle Eastern countries.
The governor of East Nusa Tenggara also suspended deployment of female workers to Saudi Arabia.
Sumiati went to Saudi Arabia in July after graduating from high school to work as a maid and send money to her impoverished family back home. Three weeks ago, she was found unconscious, malnourished, bleeding, unable to speak and badly injured.
Photos and reports of her condition dominated the news in Indonesia the past few days, shocking her family and the rest of the Muslim nation.
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