HRW blames govt. for making Lankan women slaves in Saudi

By Mendaka Abeysekera in New York
The New York-based right organisation Human Rights Watch (HRW) has criticised the Sri Lankan Government for failing to protect and help Sri Lankan migrant women in Saudi Arabia, who have been virtually treated like slaves for years.

After releasing a 133-page report titled ‘As If I Am Not Human: Abuses against Asian Domestic Workers in Saudi Arabia’, in Jakarta on July 8, the author of the report, Nisha Varia said that compared to the Filipino and Indonesian Embassies, the Sri Lankan Embassy had the weakest services.

"The Sri Lankan Embassy provides some help to domestic workers who face abuse, but it is not enough. They need to increase their staff to deal with these cases, improve the quality of their shelter, and undergo training. The quality of the shelter was very poor, and women often had very little information about the status of their cases," Varia, a Senior Researcher in the Women’s Rights Division of HRW, said.

"In the absence of effective local redress mechanisms, the foreign missions of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Nepal often play a critical role in providing shelter, legal aid and assistance to those who have wage claims or court cases. The demands placed on these embassies far outweigh their resources, and many domestic workers complain of long waiting periods with little information about their cases and, in the cases of Indonesia and Sri Lanka, overcrowded and unhygienic shelters," Varia added.

"Many of the women I spoke to did not file complaints for fear of counter charges. In other cases, they dropped the charges against their abusers, even if they had a strong case, because otherwise they would be stuck in an overcrowded shelter for years, away from their families and unable to work, and with very little chance of ultimately getting justice," she said.
Varia was of the opinion that in many Sri Lankan cases, the women had little option, since there weren’t enough jobs at home. "The answer is not to stop women from migrating, but to make migration safe," she said.

The new report, which concludes two years of research based on 142 interviews with domestic workers, senior government officials, and labour recruiters in Saudi Arabia and labour-sending countries, Saudi households employ an estimated 1.5 million domestic workers, primarily from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Nepal.

According to Saudi Arabia’s General Statistics Department, out of the over eight million migrants work in the kingdom, more than 600,000 come from Sri Lanka.

The 133 page report released in Jakarta revealed the shocking and serious human rights abuses in the form of unpaid wages, forced confinement, physical and sexual violence the Asian workers had to endure while working in Saudi homes.

"Excessive workload and unpaid wages, for periods ranging from a few months to 10 years, are among the most common complaints. The Kingdom’s Labour Law excludes domestic workers, denying them rights guaranteed to other workers, such as a weekly rest day and overtime pay. Many domestic workers must work 18 hours a day, seven days a week," the report disclosed.