www.islam-watch.org

Sri Lankan house maid L.T. Ariyawathi, who returned from Saudi Arabia with 24 nails inside her body, talks to a nurse while receiving treatment at a hospital in Batticoloa. The maid, L.T. Ariyawathi, 49, alleged that her Saudi employer had tortured her and drove nails into her body as punishment.

On March 25, 2010, Ariyawathi had gone to Saudi Arabia to work as a maid for a large Saudi family. After five months in the country, the mother of three returned home deeply traumatized after what, she said, was months of beatings and physical abuse. She was unable to tell anyone what had happened to her there. Her family had no idea she had been tortured, until they took her to see a doctor when she complained of severe pain.

A Sri Lankan Foreign Employment Bureau official said of her torture: "The landlord and his wife hammered 24 nails into her when she complained of the heavy workload."

At first, her employers mocked the basic Arabic she had learnt during a 15-day training course before she left for the Gulf. Then, slowly, these events took a more sinister turn. “The torture started when she broke a plate by accident. (My employer) asked me whether I was blind and tried to prick something in my right eye,” the 49-year-old maid said. “When I covered it with my hand, they pricked a needle on my forehead above the eye.” She said her male employer stuck heated nails into her, heated by his wife; because, they were angry that she couldn't understand their language and that she told them she felt overworked, she said.

X-rays showed one to two-inch nails in her hands and legs, and even one over her eyes. The doctor, who treated the 49-year-old maid said, there appeared to be no damage to her internal organs. "She is in good condition, she's pain-free now and she's very happy," she said.

Before the surgery, Ariyawathi met with reporters from Lankan capital, Colombo, and displayed open wounds on her hands, feet and forehead, where the nails had been hammered into, according to one report by Al-Jazeera.  "The told me they would slit my throat if I screamed, so I had to keep silent and bear it," she said, adding: "What else could I do?"

One of Ariyawathi's surgeons told the media today that inserting nails into someone is more than just torture; it can also lead to life-threatening complications. "The nervous system and internal organs can be damaged by having nails like this," Dr. Prabath Gajadeera said. "It can also lead to germs entering and spreading in the body, so we are trying to remove as many nails as possible."

Ariyawathi told doctors and Sri Lankan officials that she somehow persuaded her employers to let her leave after five months, but that she had to pay her own plane ticket home and she was not given all her salary. She did not tell anyone about gruesome torture she suffered in Saudi Arabia, for fear of reprisals. She flew back to Sri Lanka on Aug. 21. Next Sunday, her children took her to the hospital, where X-rays revealed the 24 nails stuck in her body.

A doctor shows a nail extracted from the body of a Sri Lankan housemaid who underwent surgery to remove 24 nails allegedly embedded in her body by her Saudi Arabian employer.

Surgeons had to operate to remove some 16 nails, which were hammered into the legs, hands and forehead when she complained her employers were working her too hard.

Eight smaller, needle-like nails were left in place because their removal risked causing nerve damage.

Sri Lanka's external affairs ministry has said, it is taking up the matter with the Saudi government. Around 1.8 million Sri Lankans are employed abroad, of whom 70% are women. Most work as housemaids in the Middle East, while smaller numbers work in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The Saudi authorities have questioned the mother-of-three's account. The case has, however, brought into focus of how some foreign employers, particularly in Islamic countries of the Middle East, treat the thousands of poor women from South Asia and beyond, who work there, lured by the promise of better wages to help support their families back home.

Human Rights Watch have raised concerns about the Gulf States, particularly Saudi Arabia, where cruelty and ill-treatment of overseas workers — from withholding wages and travel documents to overwork and sexual abuses — are the worst.

A recent Channel 4 television documentary said many of the more than 15,000 domestic workers, who come to Saudi Arabia each year, endure a modern form of slavery, with a charity claiming one in five people they see reports abuse. Joynal Abedin Joy, a charity worker in Bangladesh, said rapes, beatings and brandings were “routine” in Lebanon and Egypt, although the government in Dhaka said it was unaware of any pattern of abuse. “Last week a girl came back from Lebanon,” Abedin told AFP. “She was bald. Her employer had shorn her hair because she refused to have sex with him."

In 2009 alone, dead bodies of 11 Bangladeshi girls came from Lebanon. “Most had torture marks on their bodies. I know of a girl, who called her home for help. Two days later, her Lebanese employers informed her family that the girl had died due to a heart attack,” said Abedin.

Nargis Begum, a 26-year-old Bangladeshi, said her employers in Beirut gave her electric shocks, beat her with chains and leather belts and burnt her with hot irons for five months, during which she was also raped.

“Ninety-five percent of the Bangladeshi girls I met there told me that they were raped at their work place. They don't tell their families out of fear. They endure it and accept their fate,” said the mother-of-two.

Maya Gurung, 35, left Nepal in 2004 for a job as a cleaner in Kuwait. She said she was forced to work up to 20 hours a day and was often made to survive on scraps of leftover food from her employers. Her attempts to leave were dashed, because the recruitment agency had taken away her passport. She became pregnant after a man she met at a local mosque offered to get the documents back in exchange for sex and had to quit her job. When she appealed to the police for help, she was jailed on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant. Gurung managed to return to Nepal last year but her family shunned her and she now lives in a shelter in Kathmandu.

The wages earned by domestic workers form a significant part of the billions of dollars in remittances sent home to developing countries every year. Unions, activists and human rights campaigners say migrant workers need greater protection, as individual Arab governments are failing to include them in labour laws or where they are, their rights are still limited.

The International Labour Organization (ILO) is working towards new guidelines for such employees, including written contracts and complaint mechanisms, as well as guarantees on minimum wages and working hours. In the meantime, lawmakers, like Sri Lanka's Ranjan Ramanayake, have called for government action, describing the plight of the country's female migrant workers as a “social issue” and suggesting Saudi Arabia should be blacklisted.

“I'm ashamed to say this, but the truth is we have become international pimps... by sending or rather selling our mothers, sisters and daughters to be enslaved or abused,” he said.

Campaigners in Bangladesh, Nepal and India also want their governments to do more. “Migrant workers have simply not been on the political agenda in Nepal,” said Sharu Joshi Shrestha, from the UN Development Fund for Women. Returning workers share experiences while women are warned about some unscrupulous agents who charge exorbitant sums to arrange placements, travel and visas, plunging already poor families into crippling debts.

"The Sri Lankan maid is not an isolated case," said Sister Sally Michael, the movement's regional coordinator in the southern state of Kerala. "There are so many cases like it. It's a serious issue."

Comments (14)

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written by vbv , September 16, 2010

Islam is an arabian cult with the agenda to promoite arab supremacy. It is a racist idealogy having utter contempt for all humanity except the arabs. It is a poison. This and other attrocities should be shown to the nonarab muslims to expose the true intent of this rotten criminal idealogy.But will these zombified idiots ever realise the truth of this massive arab conspiracy to colonise the world by imposing their bigoted,cruel,barbaric ,criminal and racist idealogy called islam?

Allah wills it...
written by duh_swami , September 16, 2010

About two years ago I read where a housemaid ran away from her employer because of abuse...She was arrested, then raped by 46 men including the policeman that arrested her...Where did this take place?...Mecca...right under Allah's nose...

House maid's rape?
written by proudest kafir , September 16, 2010

I mean what the heck is all about? A house maid is a right hand possession of the sodi cretin and the cretin has a perfect example to follow in the rape by the rapist pedophile mohammad . Where is the question of rape, when allah the pimp sanctions the sexual interaction with maid as a pious ,islamically hallified activity.The problem with the infidels is that they do not understand the beauty of allah and his rape order.

Islam divides......
written by Tanstaafl jw , September 16, 2010

........... humanity into two camps - believers and infidels. Believers can do anything they want to infidels. It is halal (permitted).

Animals
written by balam , September 16, 2010

The Muslims are proud to have a perfect human being in Mohammad to follow.He was mentally sick,a rapist,a terrorist,a paedophile,a robber,a slave trader,and to say the least an Immoral Beduin.Hence,what else can you expect from his Arab Muslim followers.They even treat their Non-Arab Muslims with great contempt which they deserve.I agree with VBV that these South East Asians should rethink and cast off the shackles of Arab supremacy and go back to their roots as Indians.Without oil,which was discovered by the Christian European Kafirs,these Arab Muslims would still be collecting the camel dung for fuel.As much as the Hindus and Muslims hate the Christians and specially the European,who certainly do not treat Non-Christians so badly.They always try to amend any injustice done in their societies.Hindus have despicable caste system and the Muslims have deep rooted prejudice against Christians.The treatment of Sri Lankan woman is most despicable.These countries should try to creat jobs for its people rather than export them into Islamic Arab barbaric heartless slavery.Islam is the worst mental illness one could suffer from which turns normal human beings into wild animals.

Where is the rage?
written by Abu Taleb , September 17, 2010

I wonder, why most people are not showing any rage for this case, and other similar cases. I believe there are thousands similar cases happened in Saudi and other Gulf countries, every few weeks I read such story in a local newspaper.

To balam
written by Archpagan , September 17, 2010

I know you are a European. Your knowledge about casteism is limited to what your padres say about it. They have their obligation to convert us Heathens. You have no first hand knowledge. If casteism is 'despicable' as you said, your system of slavery and feudalism was far more despicable. Yes, casteism exists till now, but why? You can not imagine that people go on the rampage demanding the 'status' of lower caste. Because, it is highly profitable to be a lower caste under the present dispensation. Well, we hate our lower castes, but, how do you look upon 'Heathens' or ‘Blackies’? That is too well known to be spelt out. Ours is a 5-thousand year old civilization, the oldest surviving civilization in the world. The concept of welfare state is nurtured by us right since the time when Europeans practiced cannibalism. We need no lesson from you on morality and civil behavior.

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written by Machmoed , September 18, 2010

Many westerners who work in islamic countries after a couple of years think the culture is different but certainley not less. Any antropologist would agree that all cultures more or less are interresting. We can't judge cultures. We can judge ideologies. If we have to perfect ourselfes, we have to perfect/evolve our standards, but if one claims the standards are eternal, then we should discuss the matter with those who believe the claim.

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written by vbv , September 18, 2010

Well said,Archpagan. I second you on castism,which is not desirable but a dispensation that discriminates on the basis of their birth. But this is not half as evil as what the whiteman practiced - apartheid ,treating the blacks as slaves and vermins, subhumans not entitled to even a humane life ,but to work as a beast of burden for the whiteman a nd die miserably under his torture. The arabs also practise this even today - as can be seen from various incidents of torture,enslavement and illtreatment comes out of these barbaric bedouin nations.Christianity and islam are two sides of the same coin, racist,supremacist,exclusivist ,barbaric,hypocritical ,morally depraved and pontificating on top of all this. I have seen both these cults first hand at how unscrupulous,exploitative and how they use deception and massive lies and misinformation to gain converts in India. We are the oldest civilsation and we need no moral lessons from a people who believe in a lonely spook in cloud 9 spreading hate,fear and an invitation to a lewd paradise or a filthy fiery hell if you dont submit to this imaginery spook. We cherish freedom of thought and manyfaceted vision of life encompassing both belief and nonbelief ,which is not possible under the intolerant and bigoted monotheistic cults from the deserts of arabia or the palestine/judah arid zones - were ideas of life are as primitive and arid as the landscape there.

To vbv
written by Archpagan , September 19, 2010

I have some unconventional view about casteism. You said casteism is not desirable but I think it is not maintainable in this age. Nobody introduced casteism in India, it just evolved over the ages. For, never was there any machinery in place to enforce casteism on an unwilling population. Both Bramhans, who were deprived of the lucrative professions and kings, who were more often than not a non-Khsatriyas were least interested to enforce casteism. In an era when state sponsored universal education was unthinkable, people just followed ancestral trades.
We Hindus have a very stable society over the millennium and that created casteism, which got social and religious sanction. Other societies were unstable depending on slave-based economy which was far more inhuman.
Casteism is not a problem in modern India; but what creates problem is the caste based politics of Lalu, Mulayam, Mayavati and Co. Many young people living in urban India does not know the caste he/she belongs to.
Many including Sangh Parivar advocate complete obliteration of casteism from Hindu society. But I do not subscribe to such view. A monolithic Hindu society, totally concentrated in one region, will serve nobody's interest. Hindus may become unfit then to live in a multicultural world and others may face a Hindu Hitler. Even if the wretched casteism dies a natural death, there still will be differences like Biharis, Marathis and Punjabis, annihilation of such identities will be neither possible nor practicable.

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written by vbv , September 23, 2010

Who says that islam does not practice castism? It practices the worst kind of castism discriminating moins from kaffirs. The kaffirs have no rights, no security in an islamic dispensation: they can be robbed,looted.raped, humiliated in any manner by the muslims ,and they cannot hope for any justice in the muslim society. Their unholy shit called Quran itself asks its adherents to commit all these crimes and demand protection money until they 'convert' themselves to the evil dispensation called islam. Islam is an arab supremacist criminal cult and all non-arab muslims are mere arab arse-lickers ,having no self-respect for their own selves and their great origins ,like in India,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Indonesia,Afganistan,Malaysia
,etc., all of which had rich cultural heritage predating islam by centuries. Today these countries are arab slaves that they look down on their own heritage and culture ,venerating barbarians of Saudi Arabia. That the extent to which islam can poison and destroy indegenous cultures and heritage. It is far more toxic to the human mind that even Sigmond Frued can imagine!

To vbv
written by Archpagan , September 26, 2010

You are absolutely right. Pakistanis dread more of the memory of their ancestors like Panini and Kautilya than the the Indian atom bomb. Due to moral and cultural conditioning Muslims are prohibited from thinking positively of their non-Muslim ancestors.

Religious conversion is the worst sort of aggressions people across the globe faced so far. For, it tampers with one's very own identity. It has the effect of ethnic cleansing without bloodshed. We have nullified the British occupation of our land, but have failed miserably to reclaim large part of our land i. e. Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh lost to Muslim invaders due to religious conversion of our own people. Foremost duty of a Hindu should be to revert the conversion of our fellow men to the Semitic faiths and reclaim our Motherland and Nationhood from their evil clutches.

your pediaphile priests
written by sabri , October 18, 2010

those who have so much hatred in their hearts for Muslims as apparent in this forum, know that Muhamad the Prophet of God was not a pediaphile. The custom of marrying child brides was exactly that , an ancient custom. Muhamad was a person of his time, not of today's time. He could not have pretetended to be. He was given his child bride by his closest companion as a way of further cementing their families...it was a custom, not a twenty-first century one but one that was inpractice 1,500 years ago.

If he was a lustful cruel pediaphile, then why did his child bride grow up to love and respect him as the flesh and blood historical Aishah, his wife did?

Muhamad reduced the allowance for a man to marry from any number of times to four, and only if the wives can be treated equally, emotionally, and materially. The custom of marrying many wives was rife, and he could not stop it entirely without creating a major turmoil in the society. Now reducing the number to four was actually a deterrent for marrying more than one for as we can see today no man can afford or are able to treat 4 women absolutely equally (you would have to be a prophet like Muhamad, who was kind to women).

The prophet Muhamad said: the best amongs you are those who are kindest to his wife/ves...

The quran is for the times of the prophet muhamad as well as till the end times, which we are in now, when Christian priest are pediaphiles and have been so for many decades as we have found out.

Islam is telling those priests...that Muhamad MARRIED his child bride and she had rights when at that time NO WOMAN HAD AS MANY RIGHTS AS MUSLIM WOMEN!!

Check this fact...at the time of Muhamad no woman could own her own property, muslim women could, no women could ask for divorce, muslim women could under circumstances, no woman had recourse to the marriage law, because there were no such things before islam as marriage laws that protected rights of men, women and children!

In the meantime, please it would be better to look into your own secular societies' ills of rampant pediaphilia, sex addiction, ass-licking, governmental abuses around the world hiding behind democracy and freedom, inciting violence and creating patsies, so that Islam is hated and demonised...BECAUSE IT'S THE FASTEST GROWING RELIGION IN THE WORLD TODAY!!

LOVE not hatred that is at the core of all religions including Islam.
written by sabri , October 18, 2010

There are more hate-filled pages in the bible (Gospel and Old testament) than in the Quran. You can go look for yourself and count the many times the word kill occurs in gthe bible...


God never reneges on His promise: He says in the Quran, when people come into Islam, they will come in droves...

Look to your govts. penchant for false flag terrorism all around the world...they inveted terrorism from well befor colonialism, but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were when they polished it to a fine art...and started to corrupt all other countries which they looked down on.

And as for the WAHABI Saudis, this is what the prophet of Ilam had to say about their oppression of women etc..."the side of the head of Satan will rise out of najd (a large region of Saudia Arabia).

Because he knew then that WAHABISM an aberation of Islam, created by the British and Zionists to further divide Islam from within...the CIA have been funding Wahabi type fundamentilsm in all the trouble spots in the Muslim world today, until from a handful of such madrassa now in Yemen there are over 1,500 of such schools teaching things that Muslims do not teach...like that suicide is ok, like killing yourself and along with other innocent people is ok...

Islam does not teach that suicide is ok!!

And pls. dont be so deluded, suicide bombing and such attrocities are just another Zionist and US/global empiricist/Illuminati tactic (miind control) to discredit the enemy. Otherwise why do suicide bombers mainly and nearly always hit Muslim target!!!??? It's to make Muslims look stupid on top of demonising them.

Those of you who have sold your souls to the devil that has duped you so that you can no longer see the real perpetrators of evil in this world (ie those who really control your leaders east and west) it is still not to late to wake up...

The secular worship of the human being is the source of arrogance and unbridled evil today, because you think there's no other authority but yourselves, because of your attachment to physicality...and not spirituality you behave either as tho you can live forever or that this life is it, so fantastic...when you cant even see yr owm miseraable hatred!