Woman beaten, chained to dog cage and forced to eat animal faeces by employer in Indonesia
Siti Khotimah - the Indonesian woman who suffered attrocities unleashed by her employer.
An Indonesian woman, who had left her Central Java hometown for the capital city Jakarta where she got a job as a maid to help her parents with debt, was beaten, tortured, chained to a dog cage and forced to eat animal faeces by her employer.
After going through months of harassment, the 24-year-old walks with a limp and has visible burn scars along her legs.
"My head hurts every time I think about what happened to me," she stated, sobbing. The case of Siti Khotimah is not unique in Indonesia, a country which does not have a bill to protect domestic workers because of which more than four million people, mostly women, are vulnerable to abuse.
Last month, Khotimah's 70-year-old employer was imprisoned for four years for physical abuse in south Jakarta, while the husband and daughter of the woman and six other maids were all handed three-and-a-half years.
Speaking to AFP, Khotimah said that she was also raped during her employment, however, she was unable to talk about it. Since then, she has informed the police who asked her to file a separate lawsuit for sexual abuse.
"I am very disappointed, the sentence is so light compared to what happened to me. They should have felt what I feel," she stated.
Indonesia's discriminatory laws
For nearly two decades, a domestic worker bill has remained in limbo and the government has been accused by activists of dragging its feet.
Under the current legal framework of the government, maids have not been classified as workers which forced them to operate in an unregulated and informal economy.
Even if the law is finalised, it will only help those people who get recruited by agents for working overseas, as per the advocates.
"The law is very discriminatory," said lawmaker Willy Aditya, who heads the bill's working committee, while speaking to AFP.
WATCH |Gravitas: Sexual abuse at Miss Universe Indonesia
Women's rights activists stated that more efforts are needed by the government to support domestic helpers within Indonesia.
"Khotimah's case is not the first. The government's response has always been slow," stated Tiasri Wiandani of the National Commission for Eradication of Violence against Women.
"Demanding protection from other countries while we have not fulfilled the responsibilities ourselves is like a slap in our face," he added.
You cannow write forwionews.comand be a part of the community. Share your stories and opinions with ushere.
WATCH WION LIVE HERE