She arrived in Saudi Arabia a high-spirited 23-year-old, eager to start work as a maid to help support her family back home.
Four months later, Sumiati was Indonesia’s poster child for migrant abuse, alone and staring vacantly from a hospital bed, her face sliced and battered.
But while public anger has forced President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s Government to acknowledge the problem for the first time, few expect any firm action to be taken.
Gruesome images snapped of Sumiati, now recovering in the Saudi city of Medina, have been splashed on the front pages of local newspapers and led television newscasts for more than a week.
Her employer – who has been taken in for questioning by police – is accused of cutting off part of her lips with scissors, scalding her back with an iron, fracturing her middle finger and beating her legs until she could hardly walk.
“It’s hardly the first such case,” said Wahyu Susilo, a policy analyst at Indonesia’s advocacy group, Migrant Care. “Again and again we hear about slavery-like conditions, torture, sexual abuse and even death, but our government has chosen to ignore it.
Why? Because migrant workers generate US$7.5 billion ($9.9 billion) in foreign exchange every year.”
Workers from Asian countries dominate service industries in the Middle East and there have been many reports of abuse – including allegations in recent days that an employer in Kuwait drove 14 metal pins into the body of a Sri Lankan maid.
“The wanton brutality alleged in these cases is shocking,” said Nisha Varia, senior women’s rights researcher at the New York-based Human Rights Watch, which called on authorities to investigate claims promptly and bring those responsible to justice.
She and others called cases like that of Sumiati the “tip of the iceberg”.
But countries that export labour have a responsibility as well, Nisha says.
Though Indonesia sends more than 6.5 million workers abroad every year, it has drawn much criticism for failing – despite repeated promises – to ratify a 1990 United Nations convention on the protection of migrant workers. It also has not signed a bilateral agreement with Saudi Arabia that would give workers a legal basis to challenge employers. But Oon Kurniaputra, an Indonesian Government adviser, argued this week that the problem was not the fault of governments.
It was with profit-hungry recruitment agencies that lured young men and women overseas without ensuring their safety when they got there, he said.
Sumiati’s case prompted Yudhoyono to call a Cabinet meeting last week to discuss ways in which the Government could do more. It turned out to be a public relations disaster.
It emerged that another Indonesian maid, 36-year-old Kikim Komalasari, had allegedly been tortured to death by her Saudi employer, her body found in a rubbish bin on November 11 in the town of Abha.
“It’s shocking to hear this … it’s beyond inhumane,” said Yudhoyono. “I want the law to be upheld and to see an all-out diplomatic effort.”
Some legislators suggested a moratorium on sending domestic workers to Saudi Arabia, something that is considered unlikely given the close economic and political ties between the predominantly Muslim countries.
It also comes at a sensitive time, with hundreds of thousands of Indonesians having just been in Saudi Arabia performing in the annual Hajj pilgrimage.
Yudhoyono, meanwhile, had a proposal: Give all migrant workers cellphones so they can call family members or authorities if they need help.
“It just shows how little he understands the problems domestic workers abroad are facing,” scoffed Rieke Dyah Pitaloka, an opposition legislator. “Their employers are locking them up and taking away their passports … they aren’t going to let them keep a phone.”
Most people believe little will change until girls are better educated and prepared for better jobs in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelagic nation of 237 million people, where the average wage is less than US$300 a month.
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