Abused Hong Kong maid Erwiana 'rises again'

Yahoo - AFP, Agus Purwanto, 28 September 2018

Erwiana now works on behalf of migrant workers

She was once the face of abused maids in Hong Kong -- imprisoned, starved and beaten so badly she lost control of her bodily functions.

But four years after her horrific ordeal made global headlines, Indonesian Erwiana Sulistyaningsih is a university graduate and fighting for the rights of domestic helpers in the southern Chinese city and beyond.

Erwiana completed a degree in economics this month -- the culmination of a dream that brought her to Hong Kong in 2013 before her life was turned upside down.

"Before I went to Hong Kong, I had been dreaming I could make enough money to study," the 27-year-old told AFP from her home in Indonesia's cultural capital Yogyakarta.

"After the incident, I thought I might have to give up on that dream."

Erwiana's employer Law Wan-tung was jailed after pictures of her extensive injuries went viral in 2014.

Widespread media coverage of Erwiana's torture had one unexpected benefit -- she was offered scholarships to study.

"I'm happy but it's bittersweet because even though I graduated university there are still many migrant workers who are persecuted and treated badly," she said.

She chose economics partly to understand "why so many people in this world have to migrate" for work.

"People should be able to live peacefully in their own country without having to work abroad unprotected," she said.

Erwiana plans to take that message to demonstrations outside the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Bali next month.

Erwiana's horrific ordeal made global headlines

She now works on behalf of migrant workers, including pushing for the release of former Filipina maid Mary Jane Veloso who is on death row in Indonesia for drug smuggling.

Most domestic workers in Hong Kong are from poor communities in Indonesia and the Philippines and are vulnerable to abuse by employers and employment agencies.

Migrants from both countries have also suffered injury -- or worse -- in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

In February, the death of a Filipina maid in Kuwait, whose body was found this year stuffed in a freezer, sparked outrage in the Philippines.

Also this year, Indonesian domestic helper Adelina Sau died in hospital after being rescued from her employer's house in Malaysia's Penang state, with wounds covering her body. Her boss was charged with murder.

It is these stories that prompted Erwiana to fight for workers' rights, and never give up on herself even when she doubted her chances.

"I never imagined I'd be here -- I almost gave up," she said.

"I was so sick, I was a failed migrant worker and my injuries were all over the media.

"But because my family and fellow migrant worker friends gave me strength, I finally had the spirit to rise again."

VIDEO: A former Indonesian domestic helper Erwiana Sulistyaningsih was imprisoned, starved and beaten so badly she lost control of her bodily functions. But four years later, she now fights for the rights of domestic helpers around the world https://t.co/RYY89JL6rA pic.twitter.com/kn1yXP9R6y

— AFP news agency (@AFP) September 28, 2018

Erwiana Sulistyaningsih arrives at the Wanchai Law Courts to begin giving

 evidence against her former employer who is accused of abuse and torture, in

Hong Kong on Monday. (AFP Photo/Isaac Lawrence)

Related Article:

Erwiana Tells Court of ‘Torture’ by Hong Kong Employer

Indonesian maid to return to Hong Kong to help torture probe

Jokowi to Scrap ID Card for Indonesian Migrant Workers

Minister Promises Better Days Ahead for Indonesian Migrant Workers

Jakarta Globe, Nov 08, 2014

Indonesian migrant workers wait to exit a Saudi ship at Tanjung Priok Port, in
Jakarta. (JG Photo/Udhi Sukma Wijaya)

Jakarta. The newly inaugurated Minister of Manpower and Transmigration, Hanif Dhakiri, pledged on Saturday to audit all migrant worker placement agencies in a bid to crack down on widespread extortion of some of the country’s most vulnerable people.

“I will not tolerate anyone playing dirty, be it the agencies or the staff in my ministry,” Hanif told Indonesian news portal Tempo.co on Saturday.

The sector is nominally regulated but criminal gangs have long established  that the placing of poorer members of society in countries such Dubai and Saudi Arabia makes for good business. Migrant workers frequently fall victim to extortion at the hands of these agents.

“Hopeful migrant workers are asked to deposit guarantee money and told they would receive training but what happens next is they don’t get the training and the agents run away with their money,” Hanif told Tempo.

The lot of the migrant worker is a major political issue in Indonesia. While remittances sent by construction workers and domestic workers from abroad has had an important impact on raising hundreds of thousands of families out of poverty, migrant workers are often victim to mental and physical abuse and in many cases have to surrender their passports to either agents or employers.

Extreme cases such as the recent murders of two women in Hong Kong, allegedly at the hands of a British banker, occasionally make international headlines, but the domestic press is never short on stories of abuse perpetrated by agents, employers — even the governments of workers’ destination countries.

There are around 45 Indonesian domestic workers on death row in Saudi Arabia, while 375 Indonesians workers were facing the death penalty worldwide in 2012, according to data from Migrant Care, a Jakarta-based advocacy group set up by labor activists.

While migrant workers are frequently extorted when they are first recruited — the villages of West Java being particularly fertile ground for placement agents — the return journey home has historically been an opportunity for members of the military, police and airport authorities to take a cut of workers’ wages.

The KPK and the National Police conducted a joint raid on July 25 at Soekarno Hatta International Airport in Jakarta and arrested 18 people — including a soldier and two members of the National Police.

The men were running a decade-long racket at the airport where returning workers would be forced to pay up to 10 times the market rate for a taxi to their chosen destination. A foreign exchange scam would also relieve the workers of large sums of money. One worker testified that she had been forced to pay $250 for a taxi.

The vast scale of the extortion racket is instructive of a systemic lack of protection.

Migrant Care director Anis Hidayah said earlier this year that 400-500 migrant workers were extorted when they returned home, describing the scam as “systemic” and estimating that the figure represented 45 percent of the total number of workers re-entering Indonesia.

In addition to addressing the entrenched exploitation of workers, Hanif also plans to improve the facilities where migrant workers are housed before they leave the country.

“The fact is; they look more like detention centers,” Hanif told Tempo.co.

“I have seen some migrant workers stay in these shelters for eight months,” he added.

Hanif pledged to ensure that all Indonesian migrant workers receive proper protection from when they are recruited to when they return home.

Ministry data show there are 520 registered placement agencies in the country.

“We will conduct an audit for all these agencies,” Hanif said.

Dignity in Decent Work: Protect Domestic Workers From Abuse

Jakarta Globe, October 29, 2013

 “I woke up at 4:15 a.m.,” Asma said. “I was exhausted when I went to sleep at 10 p.m. I only had five minutes’ rest … I did not get any days off [or] salary.” Asma is one of an estimated 1.8 million women and girls in Indonesia who engage in domestic work, one of the largest sources of employment for rural women in the country. Her story — too real for too many — transcends national boundaries, resonating with the more than 52 million maids, nannies and caregivers worldwide whose labor is essential to the households they serve.

But domestic workers in Indonesia do more than cook, clean and care for their employers’ families. Their labor is also essential to Indonesia’s national economy, and yet the government is not protecting them.

Indonesia, like many other countries in Asia and the Middle East, excludes domestic workers — or pembantu rumah tangga — from its national labor laws. This leaves their work largely unregulated and denies domestic workers access to basic rights enjoyed by other workers, such as a minimum wage, weekly days off, and overtime. Their exclusion from key labor protections is exacerbated by the unique isolation domestic workers face in the private homes of their employers — where they are often subject to an array of exploitative conditions and criminal abuse.

Once marginalized and invisible, a new dawn could be approaching for Asma and other domestic workers like her. In collaboration with full-time domestic workers who are driving national efforts, stalwart activists — such as Anis Hidayah of Jakarta-based Migrant Care, and Lita Anggraini of Indonesia’s National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy — are engaging and mobilizing domestic workers at the community, national and international level.

Domestic workers are using innovative strategies to unite their efforts into a global movement with its voices heard in legislative chambers from the Philippines to South Africa, and Italy to Argentina. Domestic workers around the world are partnering with labor unions and civil society groups, putting their issues front and center of their governments’ national agendas and demanding that their basic human rights be respected.

A new report from the International Domestic Workers Network, the International Trade Union Confederation and Human Rights Watch tracks the impressive momentum of the global domestic workers’ movement over the last two years. Based on interviews from domestic workers and civil society representatives from over 20 countries, “Claiming Rights: Domestic Workers’ Movements and Global Advances for Labor Reform” explores the creative strategies activists have used to mobilize and strengthen labor laws at the national and international level.

Over a decade of organizing by domestic worker activists — including Indonesia’s robust movement — has culminated in the establishment of a groundbreaking new treaty that sets out the first international labor standards to promote decent work for domestic workers. The International Labor Organization’s Domestic Workers Convention entitles domestic workers to the same basic rights as other workers, such as a minimum wage, social security, weekly days off and clear information on the terms and conditions of their employment. Governments whose countries are party to the convention are obligated to protect domestic workers from violence, regulate private employment agencies that recruit domestic workers, and prevent children from laboring in domestic work.

According to a 2013 ILO study, over 20 million domestic workers are employed in Asia, making the region the single largest employer of domestic workers worldwide. The Philippines was the first Asian country to ratify the Domestic Workers Convention. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono should ensure that Indonesia is the second.

President Yudhoyono expressed his unequivocal support for the Domestic Workers Convention at the 2011 ILO Conference in Geneva. Meanwhile, though, Indonesia’s Bill on the Protection of Domestic Workers — put before parliament more than two years ago — has made little progress toward enactment, and its current provisions fall short of international standards that would provide meaningful legal reform.

The Indonesian government should bring its domestic workers under the protection of national labor laws and ensure that those laws are strengthened to comply with international human rights standards. It should closely work with civil society groups to strengthen the proposed domestic workers’ bill, laying the groundwork for Indonesia’s ratification of the Domestic Workers Convention.

Indonesia has an historic opening where the voices of domestic workers like Asma are transcending the walls of their employers’ homes to occupy a rare public and political space. The government should listen and respond to these voices, by taking concrete steps to ensure that all of Indonesia’s workers get the dignity they deserve, the value they earn and the respect that they demand.

 Matthew Rullo, a coordinator in the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch, is a co-author of “Claiming Rights: Domestic Workers’ Movements and Global Advances for Labor Reform.” Follow him on Twitter: @MatthewRullo.

Related Articles:

Domestic workers to get equal rights in Brazil

Domestic workers unite behind international convention

A domestic helper from Mindoro island gathers hanging clothes in Manila on

September 6, 2012 (AFP/File, Jay Direct

Petition against Maldives rape victim flogging

Google – AFP, 22 March 2013 

Maldive President Mohamed Waheed speaks at the United Nations General

Assembly on September 27, 2012 in New York (AFP/File, Stan Honda)

COLOMBO — More than half a million people have signed an online petition condemning the Maldives over the sentencing of a 15-year-old rape victim to 100 lashes for pre-marital sex with another man.

The petition, started two days ago by New York-based campaign group avaarz.org, calls on Maldives President Mohamed Waheed to intervene and had been signed by 650,000 users on Friday afternoon.

"Let's build a million-strong petition... then threaten the islands' reputation through hard-hitting ads in travel magazines and online until he steps in to save her and abolish this outrageous law," Avaaz said on its website.

Last month the unidentified Maldivian girl was sentenced to a public flogging after police investigating a complaint that she was raped by her stepfather found that she had also been having consensual sex with another man.

President Waheed had expressed shock and asked the state attorney general to appeal the conviction amid an international outcry and condemnation from rights groups such as Amnesty International.

Under law in the Maldives, a low-lying archipelago of coral-fringed islands populated by 330,000 Sunni Muslims, the flogging will be carried out when the girl reaches the age of 18.

Premarital sex is illegal in the popular honeymoon destination, which observes elements of Islamic Sharia law as well as English common law. The fornication law is not known to have been applied to foreign tourists.

The child's stepfather is accused of rape and the murder of a baby born to his stepdaughter as a result. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

In September, a court in the Maldives ordered the public flogging of a 16-year-old who confessed to premarital sex. Her lover was jailed for 10 years.

The Avaaz.org petition can be seen .

On the Net:

• here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/maldives_global/?wSxzsdb

Related Articles:

650,000 sign petition against Maldives rape victim flogging - New

Maldives girl faces flogging after alleged rape

Girl, 16, sentenced to 100 lashes for having sex with an older man in the Maldives

Bikram Singh Brahma suspended by Congress over Assam 'sex attack'

India to name and shame sex offenders as rape protests grow

Indian Teen Kills Self After Pressed to Drop Rape Case