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)

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Kuwait, Philippines sign deal to regulate domestic labour

Yahoo – AFP, May 11, 2018

Filipino workers arrive to Manila International Airport from Kuwait on February 18,
2018, after the murder of a Philippine maid sent hundreds of women streaming
back home (AFP Photo/NOEL CELIS)

Kuwait City (AFP) - Kuwait and the Philippines signed a deal on Friday to regulate domestic workers, after a dispute between the two countries led to a ban on Filipino workers in the Gulf state.

"A short time ago we signed an agreement between the two countries on the employment of domestic workers," Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Sabah told a joint press conference with his Filipino counterpart Alan Peter Cayetano.

In February Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte imposed a partial ban on workers travelling to Kuwait after a Filipina maid was murdered and her body found in a freezer.

The crisis deepened after Kuwaiti authorities in April expelled Manila's ambassador over video footage of Philippine embassy staff helping workers escape employers accused of mistreatment.

Cayetano said a new ambassador to Kuwait would soon be appointed and that he would advise Duterte to "immediately" lift the ban.

"I think the crisis is over. We will move on with the bilateral relations and we will resume normal ties with Kuwait," said an official with Cayetano's delegation.

He added that the agreement "gives a number of rights to Philippine workers".

A copy of the agreement seen by AFP says that workers will be allowed to keep their passports and cellphones -- often confiscated by employers.

It stipulates that contract renewals should be approved by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, instead of being automatically renewed.

Employers must provide domestic workers with food, housing, clothing and health insurance, according to the document.

About 262,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, 60 percent of them in domestic labour, according to Manila.

More than two million Filipinos are employed across the Gulf.

Rights groups have repeatedly urged Gulf states to reform their labour laws to cover domestic workers and provide them with "equal protections" available to other workers.

Malaysian Employers Puzzled by Indonesia's New Rule on Live-In Maids

Jakarta Globe, June 01, 2016

Indonesian maids relaxing on their day off in Victoria Park, Hong Kong in this
 November 2012 file photo. In the wake of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's
move to step up protection of Indonesian domestic workers abroad, several
 of the affected countries have been trying to resolve issues of employer
responsibilities and maid's welfare. (JG Photo/Jurnasyanto Sukarno)

Jakarta. In the wake of President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's move to step up protection of Indonesian domestic workers abroad, several of the affected countries have been trying to resolve issues of employer responsibilities and maids' welfare.

Last month, Indonesia announced a ruling that will stop women from working as live-in maids in foreign countries, including Malaysia. The new ruling also requires domestic workers abroad to enter into formal contracts with their employers.

"Once the maids become formal workers, their employers will no longer have to take care of their lodgings, security and other things. They have to take care of all their expenses [themselves], and whatever happens to them has nothing to do with their employers," Malaysian Maid Employers Association president Engku Ahmad Fauzi Engku Muhsein, as reported by Malaysian news outlet Bernama on Wednesday (01/06).

He added that if the domestic help sector was formalized, the current high recruitment costs for maids must be lowered.

According to the report, the government has set recruitment costs for Indonesian maids at 7,800 ringgit ($1,800), but agents have been charging employers as high as 12,000 ringgit, with an additional annual levy of 600 ringgit and a medical examination costing 100 ringgit.

Datuk Raja Zulkepley Dahalan, president of the Malaysian National Association of Employment Agencies (Pikap), meanwhile stated that the plan would have social implications and cause more complications between the two countries.

He suggested that the government should consider only allowing 50 to 100 reliable and financially strong agencies to control the hiring process. According to him, these agencies would be able to provide housing and other services for the domestic workers.

"I understand that around 350,000 employment agencies are registered with the government, while there are another 27,000 that are unregistered. These agencies should be responsible for the welfare of the maids as they have the capacity to provide them with the maximum protection," the Pikap president told Bernama.

Penang Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng also stated that the plan would affect the Malaysian economy, as it could force many women out of the workforce, or even result in men having to become stay-at-home dads.

"In many households, both parents work so they need live-in maids to help them. So without live-in maids, it will only force the women to leave the workforce and stay home," the minister told the Malaymail Online news outlet last month.

According to Migrant Care data, there were 6,5 million Indonesians working abroad in 2014, with 2,5 million of them employed in Malaysia mainly as maids, construction workers and laborers.

Hong Kong's domestic workers 'treated worse than the dogs'

Many of the hundreds of thousands of migrant domestic workers looking for a better life in Hong Kong end up exposed to abuse at the hands of their employers. Zigor Aldama reports with three women's stories.

Deutsche Welle, 8 Mar 2015

Kamsiah (pictured above) was one of the 334,000 foreign domestic workers registered in Hong Kong. She is also one of the many who have suffered abuses at work. At 41, she left her hometown in Indonesia to work her way to a better life. However, she found herself in a nightmare.

"This is the second time I have worked in Hong Kong, and with my previous employers I had no problems," she said. "But this family treated me worse than their five dogs."

Kamsiah said she had to sleep with the animals and was barely fed with a daily bowl of rice with some vegetables. The pets, however, received all kinds of care from five o'clock in the morning.

"I had to get up at that hour to walk them," she said. "Then I would prepare breakfast, clean the house, do laundry, make lunch, do shopping, hang and iron the clothes, cook dinner, and then the lady would ask me to give her massages until the wee hours of the morning."

No money, no passport, no options

All that for a meager HK$3,920 ($500, 466 euros) a month, from which she had to foot the HK$2,543 fee the agency charged her during her first six months on the job.

Without passports or money, there are few places foreign workers
can go to escape abusive employers

"I escaped because they made me sign my paycheck, but refused to give me the money," she said. "I could not take it anymore."

It was almost midnight when Kamsiah took refuge in a McDonald's, one of the few places open 24 hours. "I had no money or documents because the passport was being held by the agency. I desperately waited until another Indonesian appeared," she said. "She told me about an NGO that provides assistance to domestic helpers and I went to them."

But her difficulties had only just begun as she was later arrested by the police. The family that had employed her accused her of stealing a wallet containing HK$7,300. Now, after proving her innocence, Kamsiah has filed a lawsuit for labor exploitation against her former employers.

She's not the only one. Until recently this situation went unnoticed to most Hong Kong citizens, but a particularly violent case has brought it out of the shadows. In January last year, Erwiana Sulistyaningsih showed that Kamsiah's was not an isolated case.

Case reopens debate in Hong Kong

Also an Indonesian, Sulistyaningsih was taken to the airport by her employers and forced to return to her country with just 100,000 Indonesian rupiah (around $8) in her pockets. "Do not even think about saying anything of what has happened in Hong Kong, because we will kill your parents!" they threatened.

With one day off per week, many foreign workers gather to meet in Hong Kong parks

Immigration officials let her leave without asking any questions - despite her broken nose, several missing teeth and bruises all over her body. Upon her arrival, doctors in Indonesia ordered her immediate admission to a hospital where they discovered that she had suffered brain damage due to repeated blows to the head.

On February 10, a Hong Kong court found her employer, Law Wan-tung, guilty of 18 separate charges of abuse, for which she will serve six years in prison. This case reopened the debate on the employment and living conditions faced by foreign domestic workers.

Protection laws go unenforced

"The problem is that the law itself discriminates against migrants working as maids in Hong Kong," said Mabel Au, Amnesty International's China director. "First there is the obligation of living with those who employ them, and, secondly, a rule stipulating that if they do not get a job in the two weeks following the termination of their previous contract they should leave the city. But the worst is that laws theoretically passed to protect these women from abuse are not implemented."

Au said an intricate web of mafia-like organizations profit from those women thanks to a lack of supervision by government authorities.

Grace said she didn't see any options other than signing a work contract

Labor exploitation starts when workers have to sink themselves in debt to pay large amounts of money to agents and continues when they arrive in Hong Kong where, by law, agencies arranging employment for them can only charge 10 percent of the first month's salary as service fee. That's about HK$401.

"In fact, the amount ends up being much higher," Au said. "Most of the girls are scared and have little information about legal formalities. They sign their contracts in a language they don't understand - Chinese and English - and have no idea how the sector works."

Left with nothing but debts

Such practices, Au added, mean the foreign workers are often paid less than the minimum wage and unable to report how they are ripped off by agencies and employers. The workers' passports are also confiscated upon arrival "leaving them vulnerable and fully exposed to abuse."

Grace knows that well. Originally from the Philippines, she signed a labor contract to work in Hong Kong but her employer's family sent her illegally to Dalian, in northeastern China. Without her passport and unable to speak any Chinese, she didn't know what to do, so she signed a work contract. After having worked there for a while, the employers refused to pay her and sent her back to Hong Kong with just 200 RMB ($32, 30 euros) in hand.

She has filed a lawsuit against the family who employed her, but said she's not very optimistic about the outcome. Grace said doesn't think she will be able to pay the 40,000 pesos ($903, 832 euro) in debts she contracted in the Philippines with the employment agency.

Plight of Domestic Workers in Indonesia Is Seen as Mirroring Slavery

Jakarta Globe, Vita A.D. Busyra,February 25, 2014

A domestic worker being identified for work at an employment
center in Cipete, Jakarta. (JG Photo/Safir Makki)

Jakarta. The allegation that a retired police general and his wife held 16 domestic workers in captivity and tortured them in their Bogor, West Java, mansion, is a form of modern-day slavery that is only one of countless such incidents occurring behind the high walls of luxury homes in Indonesia.

Anis Hidayah, executive director of Jakarta-based Migrant Care, told the Jakarta Globe on Monday that such practices are physically concealed but occur all around us, stripping those silent victims of their most basic of human rights: freedom.

“Many of us are still trapped in the feudalistic mentality, always wanting to be served,” she said, comparing the situation to the early years of the American colonies, when Europeans desperate to cross the ocean ended up signing contracts of debt bondage or indentured servitude.

“Although indentured servants are needed to work only for a limited period, as stated in the signed contract, many were exploited as low-cost laborers and severely maltreated. Ironically, such cases occur in Indonesia today,” she said.

Mutiara Situmorang and her husband, retired police general Mangisi Situmorang, were reported to the police after one of their 16 domestic workers — half of whom were under the legal working age of 17 — fled the mansion last week, claiming she had suffered from physical abuse.

The 17-year-old, Yuliana Lewer, said she was forced to work more than 12 hours a day, and Mutiara would beat her if she made any mistake.

Anis said this case was not unique as many domestic workers in the country have similar experiences.

Similar cases

In June last year, 18-year-old Siti Nur Amalah, a housemaid working in Jatinegara, East Jakarta, went to the police after her employers, husband and wife couple Usman and Dina, had been beating her since 2012, resulting in permanent blindness. Usman had also frequently sexually abused the teenager.

“I was often told to strip naked, and he then touched my private parts,” she told MetroTVnews.com.

Police said they were still investigating the matter.

In October, the Supreme Court handed down a longer jail term to Lidya Natalia and her mother Tan Fang May for torturing their maid, Marlena, 16.

“She was chained like a dog, and beaten and soaked in the bathtub,” a judge told Detik.com.

Also in October that year, the same court punished Sri Sunarti, 29, and Yudaka, 63, for torturing their 17-year-old housemaid, Kaminah, since 2008.

Semarang-based Perisai, a child labor advocacy group, said they received reports from 30 house workers in 2012 alone who were victims of abuse at the hands of their employers.

“They have been raped, beaten and scolded almost every day of their employment,” the group said in a statement.

Anis said based on data from Walk Free Foundation’s inaugural Global Slavery Index 2013, “some 29.8 million [people] are still forced to live in slavery around the world, with some 21 million slaves in Asia, including Indonesia.”

Data from the National Network for Domestic Workers Advocacy (Jala PRT) stated 1,273 abuse cases [of domestic workers] were reported from 2011 to 2012 nationwide. In 2013, they received 650 reports of maid abuse.

Jala PRT estimates more than 10 million people currently work as maids in Indonesia.

Human trafficking

Alvon Kurnia Palma, chairman of the Foundation of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute (YLBHI) feared these cases might indicate human trafficking, though further investigation was still needed.

“These cases of abuse not only involve torture, but also forced captivity and perhaps even human trafficking. In the latter, young domestic workers are recruited, transported, delivered and finally cheated out of their wages and freedom,” he said on Monday.

In the Bogor case for instance, Alvon questioned how Mutiara was able to recruit so many girls, and more importantly, who supplied them.

“We need to find out whether these workers were taken from a broker or formal agency. And if a broker was involved, we need to find out whether he or she had the legal authority to do so.”

Alvon doubted the recruiting agency was legal.

“If they have a [proper] license, why did they recruit children of under the age of 18?” he asked.

Alvon demanded the police to investigate every lead, every person who was involved, up to the recruiting agency to prevent similar cases in future.

“No one is exempt from the law, whoever the abuser may be — even the wife of a well-known general, for example, will not be given legal leeway,” he said.

Sri Nurherwati, a commissioner at the National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan), condemned Mutiara for mistreating her domestic workers and holding them hostage. Sri also urged the police to punish the guilty accordingly, so they may never commit the same atrocities again.

Weak protection

Sri said no form of legal protection exists for household workers in Indonesia.

Any law that applies to them are weak at best, making them dependent on the “kindness” of their employers — a situation similar to slavery.

“Many of these housemaids live with their employers. They are placed in a ‘lower’ position and feel they cannot speak up for their rights,” she explained. “They are dependent on their employer. So, we must establish a legal means to protect them.”

She lamented the continued 10-year delay in the deliberations of the domestic worker protection bill in the House of Representatives. The bill, she said, would cater to the main interests of Indonesia’s domestic workers by touching on issues including minimum wage and working hours, with clear punishments outlined for employers who violate the regulations.

“We [Komnas Perempuan] have urged the House many times to discuss and then pass the bill. But the lawmakers somehow believe cases tortured maids can be resolved through existing laws,” Sri said.

However, the increasing number of abuse cases against domestic workers proves current laws fail to protect them.

“Maids, who fall into informal sectors, will still be vulnerable to mistreatment. If we do not have a form of legal protection emphasizing domestic workers as being part of the wheel of economic development, how can we consider a housewife’s job as honorable?” she said.

Anis Hidayah added that household maids work within the obstructing walls of a home; no one would bear witness to any form of abuse, and the government would not be able to intervene unless the victim voluntarily approached the police.

“There is no reason for holding back the draft bill as this [abuse] truly degrades human kind,” she said.

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