HONG KONG: An Indonesian former maid yesterday told a court for the first time how she was starved, beaten and ritually humiliated by her Hong Kong employers in a case that has sparked international outrage.
Erwiana Sulistyaningsih described in vivid detail how for months she lived on nothing but bread and rice, slept only four hours a day and was beaten so badly by her former employer Law Wan-tung that she was knocked unconscious.
“I was tortured,” she told the packed courtroom through a translator on the opening day of the trial. “She often hit me... sometimes she would hit me from behind, sometimes she hit me in the front. I was hit so often sometimes I got a headache... She hit me in my mouth (so) I had difficulty breathing.”
Opening the prosecution, solicitor Louisa Lai detailed the harrowing litany of abuse the former maid allegedly suffered including how she was told to wrap her sore-covered feet in plastic bags “because of the smell”.
Law denies all charges of abuse. Sulistyaningsih’s case has shone a spotlight on the plight of migrant domestic helpers in Asia and the Middle East after reports of torture and even killings.
In March, a Malaysian couple was sentenced to hang for starving their Indonesian maid to death, while in the same week a Singaporean couple pleaded guilty to abuse after their helper lost 20 kilos in seven months.
Such cases have prompted a clampdown on domestic worker visas in some countries — Myanmar suspended a seven-month-old scheme in September and Indonesia has pledged to stop sending domestic workers abroad from 2017.
Pictures of Sulistyaningsih, who was admitted to a hospital in Indonesia in January emaciated and in a critical condition, sparked widespread anger in her home country and even drew comment from the president. Law faces 21 charges — also pertaining to two other former domestic helpers — including grievous bodily harm with intent, criminal intimidation and failure to pay wages. The most serious carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. AFP
