A Maid’s Execution or Let's Bomb the !@#$ing Middle East!

[MachineGhost]

There are about one-and-a-half million female domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. “You would have heard about what happened to that Indonesian woman,”? Imran remarked. I hadn’t. Sumiati Binti Salan Mustapa, I learned, was a twenty-three-year-old Indonesian maid who had been hospitalized in the Saudi city of Medina in November of 2010, after her employer had cut off her lips with scissors, burnt her back with an iron, pulped her legs with beatings, and broken a finger. Mustapa, who had been working in Medina for four months when she was hospitalized, told Indonesian diplomats that her employers had been beating her from the first day of work.

Days after her ordeal, Saudi employers murdered another Indonesian maid, the thirty-six-year-old Kikim Komalasari, whose body had been dumped in a garbage bin. Muhaimin Iskandar, the Indonesian Minister of Labour, told Al Jazeera that Komalasari’s neck had been slashed and she had severe cuts to the rest of her body. In yet another incident in the Saudi capital of Riyadh, a forty-nine-year-old Sri Lankan maid named Lahadapurage Daneris Ariyawathie had nails and metal objects hammered into her by her employers in March, 2010, after she complained of being overworked.

Such abuse is not an aberration, but is widespread throughout Saudi Arabia as well as other Middle Eastern countries.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/n ... rabia.html

[notsheigetz]

A few years ago I had two sisters-in-law who were working together in Kuwait as domestic servants. For the crimes of being outside without permission and having a cell phone in their possession their employer took them to the police station and attempted to have them charged with being prostitutes. She ended up taking them back home but keeping them locked up with no communication with the outside world until they finally were able to escape and make their way to the Philippine embassy. Before being allowed to leave the country however, they had to spend 30 days in a Kuwaiti jail for the crime of "absconding from an employer".  They were the mothers of a total of about 9 kids all of whom spent months terrified that they would never see them again.

My thoughts about Kuwait at the time were similar to yours about Saudi Arabia.  Why didn't we just let Saddam Hussein keep the damn place? Just what in the heck are we doing treating people like this as our friends and allies?

[Pointedstick]

My thoughts about Kuwait at the time were similar to yours about Saudi Arabia.  Why didn't we just let Saddam Hussein keep the damn place? Just what in the heck are we doing treating people like this as our friends and allies?

The domestic natural gas boom is the best thing that will ever happen to our Middle Easy foreign policy, IMHO.

[RuralEngineer]

I try to squeeze as much compassion for these people out as I can on the grounds that they (hopefully) don't have access to the information that I do regarding most of the middle east.  However, it's very difficult.  People that go to places like Saudi Arabia or North Korea and then wonder why bad things happen to them amaze me.  They don't treat Saudi women particularly well in SA...why would they treat a foreign woman any better?

[doodle]

My thoughts about Kuwait at the time were similar to yours about Saudi Arabia.  Why didn't we just let Saddam Hussein keep the damn place? Just what in the heck are we doing treating people like this as our friends and allies?

The domestic natural gas boom is the best thing that will ever happen to our Middle Easy foreign policy, IMHO.

I think the "boom" has been greatly exaggerated. The Oil Drum always has good articles by industry analysts and insiders that bring the numbers back down to earth: http://www.theoildrum.com/pdf/theoildrum_9751.pdf

[doodle]

I think this sums up reality nicely:

The U.S. does not have 100 years of natural gas supply. There is a difference between resources
and reserves that many outside the energy industry fail to grasp. A resource refers to the gas or
oil in-place that can be produced, while a reserve must be commercially producible. The Potential
Gas Committee (PGC) is the standard for resource assessments because of the objectivity and
credentials of its members, and its long and reliable history. In its biennial report released in April
2011, three categories of technically recoverable resources are identified: probable, possible and
speculative.

The President and many others have taken the PGC total of all three categories (2,170 trillion
cubic feet (Tcf) of gas) and divided by 2010 annual consumption of 24 Tcf. This results in 90 and
not 100 years of gas. Much of this total resource is in accumulations too small to be produced at
any price, is inaccessible to drilling, or is too deep to recover economically.
More relevant is the Committee’s probable mean resources value of 550 (Tcf) of gas (Exhibit 4).

If half of this supply becomes a reserve (225 Tcf), the U.S. has approximately 11.5 years of
potential future gas supply at present consumption rates. When proved reserves of 273 Tcf are
included, there is an additional 11.5 years of supply for a total of almost 23 years. It is worth
noting that proved reserves include proved undeveloped reserves which may or may not be
produced depending on economics, so even 23 years of supply is tenuous. If consumption
increases, this supply will be exhausted in less than 23 years. Revisions to this estimate will be
made and there probably is more than 23 years but based on current information, 100 years of
gas is not justified.

[clacy]

This may sound callous, but when I hear stories about these types of things I try not to think about them.  I figure that I can't save the rest of the world, so I would rather save my emotions for things that I can affect somewhat. 

Also, I have heard of cases of abuse by Saudis in the US, where maids were abused.  It must be cultural. Many other parts of the world, have a shockingly low sense of human worth.  That's certainly not to say that many in the US aren't right there in that category.

[doodle]

This may sound callous, but when I hear stories about these types of things I try not to think about them.  I figure that I can't save the rest of the world, so I would rather save my emotions for things that I can affect somewhat. 

Also, I have heard of cases of abuse by Saudis in the US, where maids were abused.  It must be cultural. Many other parts of the world, have a shockingly low sense of human worth.  That's certainly not to say that many in the US aren't right there in that category.

From all my experiences around the world, most local domestic workers (maids, cooks, drivers) were very happy to find a job working for American ex-pats. For the most part, Americans treated their workers with dignity, respect and fairness. Maybe I'm making a generalization based on the particular American enclaves that I hung out in, but this seemed to always be the case.

[notsheigetz]

The domestic workers from poor countries like the Philippines know very well what they might be getting into when they go to some middle eastern countries. Unfortunately they don't have many options. My wife is a perfect example. After getting a bachelor's degree in medical technology she ended up having to apply for a job as a domestic worker in Hong Kong to support her son after her husband was killed. Even if you are lucky enough to be one of the med techs in the Philippines who can find a job in that field it was paying about $800/year at the time. By comparison, a foreign domestic worker is financially better off by orders of magnitude.  According to the stories she has told me she wasn't treated much better by the Chinese than her sisters were by the Saudis. Today she has a good job as a med tech here in the U.S.A. making money she would have never dreamed of.

One country in the middle east where they do seem to treat people better is Qatar. We just had niece visit from there and she seemed very happy. Also, my wife has a cousin working there as an electrician and the company he works for paid to have the whole family join him and I think they even pay for his kids to go to school there.

I try to squeeze as much compassion for these people out as I can on the grounds that they (hopefully) don't have access to the information that I do regarding most of the middle east.  However, it's very difficult.  People that go to places like Saudi Arabia or North Korea and then wonder why bad things happen to them amaze me.  They don't treat Saudi women particularly well in SA...why would they treat a foreign woman any better?