Maid abuse case hits Saudi Arabia

A Sri Lankan woman working as a domestic helper in Saudi Arabia says she has been severely abused for complaining about being overworked.


LT Ariyawathi's Saudi employers reportedly hammered 24 nails and needles into her hands, legs and forehead, which had to be removed later with surgery.



Sri Lanka's government says it will report the incident to Saudi authorities.



Al Jazeera's Laura Kyle reports on a case that rights organisations say is all too common.


Hussein Shobokshi, a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat, the pan-Arab daily, told Al Jazeera that this "kind of story triggers the talk and debate to improve labour laws in the country.


"It is an issue that has been discussed for quite some time now through the Sharia Council and Human Rights Commission.


"You will soon see the ministry of labour, the Shariah Council and the Human Rights Commission jointly activate important rules and regulations in order to prevent such incidents from occurring again and punishing people who are responsible for it.


"Nowadays you hear the cases being brought to justice, you hear the issues being put out in the media. This is a novelty; it had not been the case in the past."



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Whatever employers will think, or helpers themselves , no matter how one argues one's side, generally speaking, the helper is on the loosing end of the "battle".


It's good that more are people speaking out nowadays, and I like that the media is more involved, however sometimes, media sensationalized the story itself. It's difficult to know the truth as everyone see's truth differently, and often mistakes/confuses it as facts.


Closer "home" the last time I applied for my UK visa, it was advised that my employer acknowledge the UK labour laws- specifically minimum wages for helpers.


How many employers who take their helpers to UK follow such rules? I dare anyone who does and come forward.


Sadly, even mine don't. I still have to work 6 weeks with no off, 8-9 and sometimes still have to serve hot posh dinner at 10:30 pm. What choices do I have? Bear it and let pass or report about it and risked being fired? No employer would employ anyone who would cause such grief for wanting what is legally her right when there are hundreds, if not thousands who would be happy to be employed.


On the other hand, I know there are those who would sit own and hear the other side out. Very few, I must say.


I know my choices, I know my rights. I know where to compromise but my bottom line of still being employed is I do love my lady employer and she would give me extra holidays when she is away and I do not need to travel with her.

More on this story:


A Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid after she complained of a too heavy workload by hammering 24 nails into her hands, legs and forehead, officials said on Thursday.


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The principle of eye for an eye could be gainfully applied here. Apply the nails to the employers and I'm sure they'll think twice next time.

It is a pretty extreme and sick case!


You would certainly like to believe that NO employer in HK would go to that extreme, wouldn't you, for fear of what would happen to them at the hands of the courts?

I saw those nails on x-ray, on the television news (sky), they must have used a nail gun to do that, it is grossely inhuman and it could have killed her. Whoever did that must have been a lunatic, I hope the law deals with them appropriately.

Riyadh questions maid torture claim


Saudi government officials have questioned the account of a Sri Lankan maid who said her Saudi employers planted 24 nails and needles into her body.


Saad al-Badah, the chairman of the National Recruitment Committee, told Saudi state television on Tuesday that the account of L.T. Ariyawathi seemed "80 per cent fabricated" and suggested the motive could be extortion.


He questioned how the woman, who worked for a Saudi family in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, for five months until August, could have continued to be healthy and without infection with nails in her body.


He also said that it was hard to believe she could have passed through several airport metal detectors on her return from Riyadh with so many pieces of metal in her body.


"Even someone with just one coin in his pocket has to remove it when passing through the detector," Badah said.


Abdel-Hadi Abaeri, the head of the security department at the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority, said no reports of such abuse have been received at the kingdom's airports.


Ariyawathi, 49, returned to Sri Lanka two weeks ago, complaining that she had been beaten and tortured by her employers, who she said had hammered the nails and pins into various parts of her body.


Surgeons at Sri Lanka's southern Kamburupitiya hospital last week removed 19 of the five centimetres-long nails and a needle in a three-hour operation.


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This latest version of the story, puts a different angle on it, if she only complained after she got to Sri Lanka, and passed through xray machines at airports on her way out with nails in her???? then there is either something very wrong with the airport detector machines, or the validity of her story, still a lunatic inserted them!!! whoever did this.