Two arrested in Malaysia maid death case
Islam Is Not Terrorist by virtue of Surah Al Maidah, Verses 32 [
5:32 ]. And who is the real terrorist now?
KUPANG, East Nusa
Tenggara: Two people have been arrested in Indonesia on human trafficking
charges in connection with the death of a maid allegedly abused by her employer
in Malaysia, police and a lawmaker said Thursday.
Indonesian authorities
said the employment recruiters - an unidentified husband and wife - used forged
documents to send 20-year-old victim Adelina Sau to Malaysia in 2015.
The woman's mother said
she disappeared from their village in impoverished East Nusa Tenggara province
after her family rebuffed a recruiter's job offer for their daughter.
The domestic helper died at a Malaysian hospital on
Sunday, a day after being rescued by a migrant workers' protection group,
according to local reports.
Her head and face were
swollen and she had raw wounds on her hand and legs, a police document and
Malaysian lawmaker said.
"The doctors said the
maid died of multiple organ failure," said Steven Sim, a Malaysian
politician from the Democratic Action Party.
"She was made to sleep in the car porch
near a dog which was on a leash ... It is a senseless loss of a life."
The Indonesian recruiters were taken into
custody Wednesday on trafficking charges, while another suspect is being
pursued, police said.
A brother and sister, as well as their mother,
who employed Adelina, have been arrested in Malaysia.
Some 2.5 million Indonesians work in
neighbouring Malaysia, which is a magnet for migrant workers but salaries are
low and employees are not protected by labour laws.
In recent years the country has seen a series of
cases involving mistreatment of domestic workers including deaths.
In 2014, a Malaysian couple were sentenced to
hang for starving their Indonesian maid to death.
The problem of helper abuse was highlighted the
same year after photos of a Hong Kong-based Indonesian maid's brutal injuries
went viral. Her employer was later jailed.
Adelina's body was scheduled to arrive in the
provincial capital Kupang Thursday evening.
Her mother, Yohana Banunaek, said a man she did
not identify had come to their remote village about seven hours' drive from
Kupang offering her daughter a job in Malaysia, but they refused.
"The man came again with all this fake
paperwork and the next day we could not find Adelina. We believe she had gone
with the man," Banunaek told AFP.
The mother said the falsified documents made it
appear that Adelina was about six years older than she was.
"We urge Malaysia to bring justice to
Adelina and for the perpetrators to get heavy punishment," said Lalu
Muhammad Iqbal, an official at Indonesia's foreign affairs ministry.
Official Indonesian figures showed some 62
migrant workers from East Nusa Tenggara died last year while working in
Malaysia, mostly illegally.
Adelina was the eighth death this year, though
most were from accidents or illness, according to the data.
"Such tragic cases keep repeating
themselves," said Migrant Care executive director Wahyu Susilo.
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