Mick Hartley

A grim story from the Times (£):

The Indonesian Government is to pay blood money to save a second housemaid from being beheaded in Saudi Arabia amid a mounting diplomatic row between the two countries.

Jakarta is furious that an Indonesian maid was put to death at the weekend without her Government being notified. It now has two weeks to save a second woman from execution.

The dispute has shed light on the abusive conditions endured by domestic workers in the Gulf region and their powerlessness under the Saudi legal system.

Marty Natalegawa, the Indonesian Foreign Minister, has indicated that the Government will tap into his ministry’s citizen protection budget to pay diyat, or blood money, equivalent to £338,000. This will save the life of a woman named only as Darsem, who in 2009 was convicted in Riyadh of murdering her Yemeni employer.

Darsem is sentenced to be beheaded with a sword, the most common form of execution in Saudi Arabia, despite pleading that she killed her employer in self-defence when he tried to rape her. His family have agreed to spare her life if the blood money is paid by July 7 but, with her relatives too poor to scrape the sum together, she is dependent on her Government to raise the money.

Jakarta has threatened to stop Indonesians taking jobs in the kingdom after another woman, Ruyati binti Sapubi, was beheaded for murdering her female employer. Sapubi struck her boss repeatedly with a meat cleaver and stabbed her in the neck after suffering constant abuse, it was claimed.

Jakarta is demanding to know why it was not informed before Sapubi’s execution was carried out and has recalled its Ambassador in Riyadh over the incident.

At least 22 Indonesian maids are known to be on death row across Saudi Arabia but human rights groups believe that there may be many more.

Many are tried without proper legal representation and may be unaware of the charges against them or their full implications in the ultra-conservative country. Women alleging sexual abuse by their employer may find themselves facing prosecution under a judge’s strict interpretation of Islamic law….

Physical or sexual abuse is common and maids have little or no protection from the law. Their passports are confiscated and those who flee before the end of their contract may be forced by their employer to return.

Horror stories are common. Last year a Saudi couple tortured their Sri Lankan maid by hammering 24 nails into her legs, hands and forehead when she complained about her heavy workload. A 23-year-old Indonesian maid was left disfigured after her employer scalded her head with an iron and slashed her with scissors.

According to the BBC Indonesia has now made good on its threat, and is to stop allowing its citizens to work as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia:

Officials said the moratorium would begin on 1 August and last until the countries could agree on a policy of fair treatment for migrant workers.

That could take a long long time. Though Saudi Arabia has now apologised….not for cutting the woman's head off, that is, but for not telling Indonesia in advance that it was going to cut her head off.

It's a Saudi tradition. Here in today's Arab News is another case of maid ill-treatment, remarkable only for the length of the poor woman's name:

A Sri Lankan housemaid was kept against her will by her Saudi sponsor and not paid since she came to the Kingdom in 1997, sources from the Jazan governorate said on Tuesday.

According to the sources, the authorities rescued 45-year-old Weerawardena Hettiarachchilage Indrani Mallika Hettiarachchi and arrested the sponsor on instructions from Jazan Gov. Prince Muhammad bin Nasser, who had been tipped off about the maid by a kind-hearted Saudi living in the neighborhood….

Hettiarachchi has two children back home — 20-year-old son Asanka Pradeep who is handicapped and 19-year-old daughter Dilrukshi who has just finished school.

The maid’s husband Sunil Premathilake told Arab News over the phone from the historical Sri Lankan city of Polannaruwe, 300 km from the capital of Colombo, that his family thought Hettiarachchi had died since there had been no news about her from the Kingdom.