http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/09/02/saudi-arabia-domestic-worker-brutalized
As documented by Human Rights Watch in its 2008 report, "As If I Am Not Human," domestic workers in Saudi Arabia suffer physical and sexual abuse and economic exploitation, but face obstacles to redress. Saudi law specifically excludes the estimated 1.5 million, mostly Asian, domestic workers from protections of the labor law.
In 2005, the government drafted an annex to the labor law specifying rights and duties of domestic workers, including limits to working hours and annual leave. The consultative Shura Council approved the annex in 2009, but the Council of Ministers has not yet passed this legislation.
As a result, domestic workers, unlike other migrant workers in the kingdom, are not protected by any legal provisions specifying their working hours, weekly rest or annual leave, payment of salaries, health insurance, freedom of movement and abode, or responsibility for costs of repatriation outside of contractual agreements.
Saudi employers typically confiscate a domestic worker's passport and confine her to the house, even when she is not working. Many are locked in. Saudi law also requires an employer's written consent for a domestic worker to change employers or to obtain an exit visa to leave the country. These measures, known as the sponsorship, or kafala, system, combine to give the employer inordinate control over the worker and to block avenues for the worker to seek redress for abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
"The Saudi government should abolish the sponsorship system and make passing the annex to the labor law extending protections to domestic workers an urgent priority," Wilcke said. "Without these legal reforms, and a real system of regulatory oversight of employers, we will continue to see horrific cases of brutality, such as that suffered by Ms. Ariyawathie."
The satellite news channel CNN reported that Sri Lankan officials in Colombo said Saudi authorities had arrested Ariyawathie's employers, but a Sri Lankan embassy official told Human Rights Watch that the Saudi authorities had not yet informed the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh of any steps they had taken to investigate the matter.
In the past, Saudi police and prosecutors have failed to investigate criminal complaints by domestic workers against their employers. In January, Saudi authorities summarily deported Fatma Athman, a domestic worker from Mombasa, Kenya, a week after she suffered injuries she said resulted from her employer pushing her off a third-floor balcony in an attempt to kill her. She survived because she fell into a swimming pool, The Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported.
In the 2008 report, Human Rights Watch found that investigations and trials of domestic worker abuse were deficient. In one of the cases in the report, Ponnamma S., a Sri Lankan domestic worker, described to Human Rights Watch in 2006 her experience of approaching the police after escaping from her employers:
A senior officer came...I complained that Baba had beaten me up. Baba claimed that he was not there at the time. Then they asked if Baba paid me. I said, "For one-and-a-half years I have not been paid." I refused to go back to Baba. I insisted to go to the embassy...The police told Baba to drop me at the embassy, but he took me back to the house...The lady beat me really badly. She told me, "Anywhere you go in Saudi Arabia, they'll return you back here. Even if we kill you, the police won't say anything to us. If you hadn't run, we would have killed you and thrown you in the trash."
Another Sri Lankan domestic worker, Cha
As documented by Human Rights Watch in its 2008 report, "As If I Am Not Human," domestic workers in Saudi Arabia suffer physical and sexual abuse and economic exploitation, but face obstacles to redress. Saudi law specifically excludes the estimated 1.5 million, mostly Asian, domestic workers from protections of the labor law.
In 2005, the government drafted an annex to the labor law specifying rights and duties of domestic workers, including limits to working hours and annual leave. The consultative Shura Council approved the annex in 2009, but the Council of Ministers has not yet passed this legislation.
As a result, domestic workers, unlike other migrant workers in the kingdom, are not protected by any legal provisions specifying their working hours, weekly rest or annual leave, payment of salaries, health insurance, freedom of movement and abode, or responsibility for costs of repatriation outside of contractual agreements.
Saudi employers typically confiscate a domestic worker's passport and confine her to the house, even when she is not working. Many are locked in. Saudi law also requires an employer's written consent for a domestic worker to change employers or to obtain an exit visa to leave the country. These measures, known as the sponsorship, or kafala, system, combine to give the employer inordinate control over the worker and to block avenues for the worker to seek redress for abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
"The Saudi government should abolish the sponsorship system and make passing the annex to the labor law extending protections to domestic workers an urgent priority," Wilcke said. "Without these legal reforms, and a real system of regulatory oversight of employers, we will continue to see horrific cases of brutality, such as that suffered by Ms. Ariyawathie."
The satellite news channel CNN reported that Sri Lankan officials in Colombo said Saudi authorities had arrested Ariyawathie's employers, but a Sri Lankan embassy official told Human Rights Watch that the Saudi authorities had not yet informed the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh of any steps they had taken to investigate the matter.
In the past, Saudi police and prosecutors have failed to investigate criminal complaints by domestic workers against their employers. In January, Saudi authorities summarily deported Fatma Athman, a domestic worker from Mombasa, Kenya, a week after she suffered injuries she said resulted from her employer pushing her off a third-floor balcony in an attempt to kill her. She survived because she fell into a swimming pool, The Nation, a Kenyan newspaper, reported.
In the 2008 report, Human Rights Watch found that investigations and trials of domestic worker abuse were deficient. In one of the cases in the report, Ponnamma S., a Sri Lankan domestic worker, described to Human Rights Watch in 2006 her experience of approaching the police after escaping from her employers:
A senior officer came...I complained that Baba had beaten me up. Baba claimed that he was not there at the time. Then they asked if Baba paid me. I said, "For one-and-a-half years I have not been paid." I refused to go back to Baba. I insisted to go to the embassy...The police told Baba to drop me at the embassy, but he took me back to the house...The lady beat me really badly. She told me, "Anywhere you go in Saudi Arabia, they'll return you back here. Even if we kill you, the police won't say anything to us. If you hadn't run, we would have killed you and thrown you in the trash."
Another Sri Lankan domestic worker, Cha
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