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MALAYSIA: Pushed to the Edge, Domestic Workers Resort to Murder
By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 16, 2004 (IPS) - A ripple of combined fear and anger has hit the lowly paid and brutally worked community
of about 250,000 Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia after one of their compatriots
was sentenced to death for killing her employer following a spat over burnt curry.
Herlina Trisnawati, 22, was sentenced to death, here, on Nov. 4, after the judge rejected
her plea of insanity and ordered her to be hanged. The news made headlines across the
country and in neighbouring Indonesia.
Herlina, who was 19 at the time she hit her employer on the head with a stone pestle,
appeared puzzled when the judge delivered his sentence and asked for permission to see
her parents before she was hanged.
''I can guess what happened to Herlina...I myself wanted to kill my employer who had
worked me like a buffalo,'' said Megawati (not her real name) when IPS met her at the Pudu
Raya bus transit center in the city. ''What must have happened is long months of brutality
that finally snapped over a petty matter.''
The 25-year-old who now works in a furniture factory that exports bookshelves to China
said the intervention of a kind neighbour had prevented her from killing her boss.
''They put me to work like an animal...I did all the house work from 5am and was later
taken to the employer's coffee shop where I worked cleaning dishes until almost 10pm.
Then I was taken to the house to work until midnight before I got to bed,'' she said angrily.
''I slept a few hours a day and was verbally shouted at and abused,'' added Megawati. ''I
wanted to kill her and run and hide or commit suicide. I could not and did not know how
to walk away until the neighbour intervened.''
Although Herlina is appealing and is not going to be hanged any time soon, the death
sentence hangs heavily on her.
Her desperate parents in Surabaya and many human rights activists here and in
Indonesia want the government to commute the sentence, abolish capital punishment and
ease the horrendous burden that domestic workers have to bear.
While Herlina is on death row, another Indonesian domestic worker Aida Sukardi, 19,
awaits trial for the alleged murder of her employer in 2003.
Both cases have now become rallying points for activists to highlight the inhumane
treatment of foreign domestic workers by their Malaysian employers - first exposed by the
Nirmala Bonat case.
Bonat, from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, told a Malaysian court in May that she was
abused every day for five months by her employer's wife, including being burnt with an
iron.
Attorney-General Abdul Ghani Patail described her abuser as a ''monster'', who could be
jailed for up to 80 years.
''Research and interaction with domestic workers indicates that their isolated work
conditions, with little or no protection, increases their vulnerability to abuse, exploitation
and health hazards,'' said Sharuna Verghis, regional co-coordinator of CARAM Asia, an
advocacy NGO seeking to empower migrant workers to fight for their rights.
In a statement Sharuna said CARAM Asia regrets the harsh death sentence on Herlina
and urged the government to commute it and do away with capital punishment.
''A recent CARAM Asia study on domestic workers showed that the deplorable working
and living conditions of domestic workers causes mental illness that can easily lead to
crime,'' she said.. ''The illness includes the whole range of psychiatric illnesses - from
acute psychotic disorders, major and minor depressions to adjustment disorders.''
Sharuna also said the stress made them highly susceptible to heart ailments.
She pointed out that the research found that just as important were the somatic
manifestations of psychological distress like chronic headaches, sleeping problems and
weight loss.
Psychiatrists say domestic workers unlike other migrant workers come under severe
mental pressure because they are suddenly transported from a familiar and inclusive
village environment with its support systems, into an isolated and alien environment.
''They are cooped up in a household, often a high-rise, and for months on end and with
total strangers,'' said a government psychiatrist at a leading general hospital.
The psychiatrist, who declined to be named because of government regulations, told IPS
that domestic workers are mostly Muslims from Indonesia but they have to work in non-
Muslim Chinese households and this added to the strain.
''It is really a tough job for the maid to cope, work and satisfy the employer and still
remain human,'' said the psychiatrist. ''I am seeing an upsurge of domestic workers with
mental illnesses and this is only one hospital.''
''I am really surprised at how they can manage...I can't,'' he said adding one common
reaction when under tremendous strain is for domestic workers to run away.
Some 20,000 domestic workers run away each year from their employers. But the official
government version is that they have found better paying jobs or just taken-off with their
newfound boyfriends.
If it is any indication, increasingly the Malaysian media is reporting cases of mentally
disturbed foreign domestic workers jumping to their deaths or standing on ledges
threatening to jump and displaying many other symptoms clearly associated with mental
illness.
''The increase in media reports of grievous hurt or murder of their employers by
domestic workers are signals for us to look into the system of employment, treatment and
protection of domestic workers,'' said Irene Fernandez, director of TENAGANITA, an NGO
that champions the rights of migrant workers.
''Domestic workers are alone, isolated and work in a totally alien environment,'' she
told IPS. ''Employers don't see or treat them as humans but as household property.''
''Because they are from a different culture, religion and language and economically
disadvantaged we see them as inferior and we discriminate and exploit them, setting the
stage for anger and retaliation,'' she said. (END)
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