Saudi couple "hammer 24 nails" into Sri Lankan maid

[.lava]

Why doesn't the Muslim community do something about Saudi Arabia!?

This is going to sound terrible to some but I hope the West completely takes over the East one day - in a hope of putting an end to all the medieval barbarism that continues to be allowed over there.

yeah...obviously women being raped every one or two minutes sounds much better than this, thank you

.

 

[.lava]

If you're a woman and you're going to the middle east for work I fear for you. You are below a flea bitten dog.

i can only expect you to be someone who never visited our nations, not even once. can't you even consider on your own this kind of treatment would not be welcomed in Saudi Arabia? or do you think all Saudis are like this couple? really? is it because you can never read news about Arabs who save lives, who do noble things? right, all heros are Western

.

 

[Cypress]

Why doesn't the Muslim community do something about Saudi Arabia!?

Because they are awfully rich and control access to Mecca?

 

[Father Heathen]

This should be the norm in the Middle East or even in Saudi Arabia now?

Well, torture, abuse and mistreatment does seem to be a common occurrence.

 

[xkatz]

Ouch!!!​

 

[croak]

Mm, I heard about this. I don't understand how people can treat someone as subhuman.

Why doesn't the Muslim community do something about Saudi Arabia!?

This is going to sound terrible to some but I hope the West completely takes over the East one day - in a hope of putting an end to all the medieval barbarism that continues to be allowed over there.

What do you suggest the Muslim community do? Saudi Arabia is a sovereign state ruled by a monarchy supported by its resources and other countries that want access to those resources. To be clear, this could happen anywhere, not just Saudi Arabia. Kind of veering off track here.

Then why say it? Not to mention you're conveniently ignoring "the medieval barbarism" that takes place in the West, and the West taking over the East in itself sounds like a form of "medieval barbarism".

 

[Cypress]

Maid torture report arrives in Kingdom

RIYADH: The Sri Lankan Embassy received on Saturday the medical report regarding the Sri Lankan housemaid who was found with 24 nails and needles embedded in her legs, arms, hands and forehead,
allegedly pushed into her body by the Saudi couple she worked for as a method of punishment.

A video statement from the victim translated into Arabic language was also handed over to the Saudi Embassy in Colombo for necessary action.

“We have the report regarding L.T. Ariyawathi, a 49-year-old domestic aide who came to Riyadh in March for employment under a Saudi sponsor,” an embassy official told Arab News,
adding that this would facilitate the mission to take up the case with the Foreign Affairs Ministry here requesting action against the employer.

Although the mission knows the details of the Saudi sponsor, the official said it is not protocol to contact him directly.
Arab News tried to contact the sponsor but did not get a response.

“All our actions will be channeled through the Saudi Foreign Ministry,” he said.

Doctors in Sri Lanka removed on Friday 13 nails and five needles from the maid’s body. Six needles in her hands reportedly could not be removed because the procedure would damage nerves and arteries.

Condemning it as a inhumane act on an innocent worker, Kingsley Ranawaka, chairman of the Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment (SLBFE), said that the Saudi authorities should wake up
regarding such human rights violations.

“Prompt action by the Saudi government will not only give confidence to the rest of the workers but will also stand as a warning against such merciless employers who treat workers like animals,”
Ranawaka told Arab News from Colombo.

As a welfare measure, he added the SLBFE is making arrangements to build a house for the maid.

“It was the sole purpose of her going for overseas employment and we want to fulfill her wishes,” Ranawaka said, adding that these workers go for foreign jobs in search of greener pastures
to improve their living conditions back home. “Unfortunately, a few end up with such misery.”

Ranawaka said that last year around 35,000 housemaids came to the Kingdom and 17,000 had already come during the first of the current year.

The state-run radio in Colombo said the chairman of the National Insurance Fund Senaka Abeygunasekera visited the patient at the hospital Friday and awarded the first insurance installment
of 100,000 rupees (SR 3,300). Another 250,000 rupees (SR 8,200) will be given to her shortly.

In a related development, the incident of the tortured housemaid had caused panicked among the new housemaids who are scheduled to arrive in the Kingdom.

A job agent in Colombo told Arab News Friday that he had 10 housemaids ready to be dispatched to Riyadh for employment but now they are hesitating to come to the Kingdom
because of this alarming news of human torture. “This is going to affect our trade,” said the agent, who wished to remain anonymous.

source

A similar case from 2003

Another case from January 2010

Asian Women's Labor Migration to Saudi Arabia

Lankalibrary Forum

 

[bain-druie]

This is so appalling. Thank you for making us aware of it, Cypress.

It's true that we should keep in mind, as lava and croak have pointed out, that no culture or nation has a monopoly on cruelty. We're all guilty in every society; it is our common responsibility as human beings to do what we can to expose, prevent, or stop it from happening, or at least to mourn when it does happen.

 

[zenzero]

Friend Cypress,

Saudi couple "hammer 24 nails" into Sri Lankan maid

When Jesus was hammed nails, people simply watched.
Human nature remains the same except that society has framed rules which in some countries are only in favour of their own citizens shows that we as humans have hardly evolved.

Love & rgds

 

[Cypress]

Friend Cypress,


When Jesus was hammed nails, people simply watched.
Human nature remains the same except that society has framed rules which in some countries are only in favour of their own citizens shows that we as humans have hardly evolved.

Love & rgds

:clap

 

[Cypress]

Officials unable to confirm arrest of Ariyawathi’s sponsor

Saudi official denies Sri Lankan maid was abused

 

[Cypress]

Saudis query Sri Lankan maid's torture claim

RIYADH — Saudi government and private sector officials have questioned the account of a Sri Lankan maid who said her Saudi employers forced 24 nails and needles into her body.

Saad al-Badah, head of the National Recruitment Committee of the Council of the Saudi Chambers of Commerce and Industry, told Saudi state television that the account of L.T. Ariyawathi,
seemed "80 percent fabricated" and suggested the motive could be extortion.

He questioned how the woman, who worked for a Saudi family in Riyadh for five months until August, could have continued to be healthy and without infection with nails in her body.

He also said that it was hard to believe she could have passed through several airport metal detectors on her return from Riyadh with so many pieces of metal in her body.

"Even someone with just one coin in his pocket has to remove it when passing through the detector," Badah said.

Saudi government officials dealing with the case have raised the same issue, labelling Ariyawathi's account "difficult to believe."

A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Colombo told Sri Lanka's Daily News on Wednesday that the maid could not have passed through airport security checkpoints in Riyadh and Colombo
without the nails being detected.

Ariyawathi, 49, returned to Sri Lanka on August 21 complaining that she had been beaten and tortured by her employers, who she said had hammered the nails and pins into various parts of her body.

Surgeons at Sri Lanka's southern Kamburupitiya hospital last week removed 19 of the nails -- some two inches (five centimetres) long -- and a needle in a three-hour operation.

Ariyawathi told them her Saudi employer inflicted the injuries on her as a punishment for her inability to communicate with those in the household.

"She said her employer heated the nails and then hammered them into her body," hospital director Prabath Gajadeera told AFP. "The nails were in her arms, legs and forehead."

Gajadeera said the woman could not have driven the nails herself.

"It is clear someone else had to drive in the nails," he said. "We will in any case refer her to a psychiatrist for analysis before discharging her from hospital."

The labour attache at the Sri Lankan embassy in Riyadh, Nimal Ranawaka, said he was aware of the Saudi doubts but that the case remained under investigation.

Saudi Arabia's English-language Arab News called for the probe to completed as quickly as possible to avoid further damage to the kingdom's reputation.

"Clearly the story has to be thoroughly investigated. If her employers did this then they must be punished rigorously -- and be seen to be punished," the paper said in an editorial on Wednesday.

"But equally, if the women did this to herself, hoping to benefit financially from it, she must be punished.

"Immediate action is imperative. The longer the case drags on, the more that can damage the kingdom?s reputation," the paper added.

Around 500,000 Sri Lankans work in Saudi Arabia, part of a massive foreign workforce that constitutes around 30 percent of the total Saudi population of 27 million.

source

 

[bain-druie]

Thanks again for the links, Cypress - I've been posting it on my Facebook page along with one or two other stories.

 

[Madhuri]

This is going to sound terrible to some but I hope the West completely takes over the East one day - in a hope of putting an end to all the medieval barbarism that continues to be allowed over there.

??

The East??

You realise this includes the whole of Asia too right? You want every culture destroyed and to become westernised?
I don't think this is a very good solution.

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't think this is a very good solution.

There's the best understatement of the day!

 

[EtuMalku]

I'm sure Octavia means just the Middle East . . .

 

[Madhuri]

I'm sure Octavia means just the Middle East . . .

That is still extreme ethnocentric thinking.

 

[Cypress]

The question how she came through the airport controls is interesting.
Someone any idea why the metal did not ring the alarm?

 

[Madhuri]

The question how she came through the airport controls is interesting.
Someone any idea why the metal did not ring the alarm?

Maybe it did but they let her through after not finding anything. I've seen that happen. I guess it would depend on the airport and the strictness of security measures.

 

[Father Heathen]

lol... "the kingdom's reputation."