An Indonesian maid was left with impaired vision after her current Saudi employer's wife allegedly gouged her eyes in the worst case ever of physical abuse reported with the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah recently, said Didi Wahyudi, Minister Consular for Indonesian Citizens in Saudi Arabia. It is not clear yet why the sponsor's wife did it. Wahyudi said the maid has been hospitalized and is recovering. “According to medical reports, the housemaid has received irreparable damage to her eyesight,” said Wahyudi. The domestic worker is a mother of one child. The Indonesian Consulate Office has already lodged a legal lawsuit against the housemaid's sponsor with a Tabuk court. Reminiscent of the pre-Islamic traditions of slavery, Wahyudi said, the original Saudi employer in Madina handed over the housemaid to one of his relatives as a gift. “The real culprit was identified and through legal proceedings, a combination of jail term and compensation of SR100,000 is being demanded for the victim,” he said. The compensation of SR100,000 is only a small drop in the bucket because eyesight cannot be compared with any amount of money,” Wahyudi said. Speaking about another worst case of physical abuse of an Indonesian housemaid by her Saudi employer, Wahyudi said the consulate has not yet been notified in writing by the authorities in Jakarta. Since that housemaid was secretly sent back to Indonesia by the employer, legal proceedings should begin in Jakarta itself with the Indonesian government lodging a complaint with the Saudi Embassy in Jakarta and then notifying its foreign mission in Saudi Arabia in writing. Wahyudi claimed that official sources in Jakarta told him that the housemaid was repeatedly burnt with an iron rod and made to suffer with spraying cleaning detergents on her wounds. The housemaid in Madina was allegedly forced to swallow feces down her throat. Wahyudi said, according to the statistics available with the Consulate Office, in most of the physical abuse cases, it is the sponsor's wife who initiates the physical abuse. “Weird enough, most abusers are teachers,” he said.
