Mick Hartley

Further to this and this, on the lives of domestic servants in Saudi Arabia, here’s another Arab News report:

The Indonesian Embassy reported yesterday that it logged 102 reported sexual assaults of Indonesian maids in the first half of 2008.

“This is in addition to 156 cases of physical torture reported to the embassy from January to June this year,” said Sukamto Javaladi, labor attaché at the Indonesian Embassy. “The Indonesian Embassy is seeing a steady upward trend in the number of reported cases of sexual assaults, while thousands of our women also suffer working inhumane hours for almost no pay with many enduring abuse by their Saudi employers.”

Javaladi, however, described the deplorable treatment of maids “minimal” compared to the large number of Indonesian women — estimated at 626,000 — working in the Kingdom. Indonesia sends the highest number of women to work in Saudi Arabia.

Clearly this Javaladi doesn’t want to stir up trouble, especially given the importance to the Indonesian economy of the money these servants send home, but it’s difficult to think of a comparable case where the physical torture of 156 nationals in the space of six months (never mind the unreported cases) could be so lightly dismissed by a country’s official spokesman.