Human Rights

By Carol A. Macha

Kuwaiti Abuses Continue

Hundreds of female domestic servants have fled their Kuwaiti employers and taken refuge in their respective embassies, Middle East Watch (MEW) reports. The maids, mainly from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and the Philippines, all report varying levels of abuse, mistreatment, and even rape.

The August 1992 MEW Report, entitled "Punishing the Victim: Rape and Mistreatment of Asian Maids in Kuwait," was compiled during a two-week fact-finding tour of Kuwait. MEW concluded that "while not all domestic servants in Kuwait suffer at the hands of their employers, there exists a significant and pervasive pattern of rape, physical assault and mistreatment of Asian maids that takes place, largely with impunity."

The abuse of the female domestic servants has occurred during a period of social hostility toward any foreigners in Kuwait. Since the liberation of Kuwait, the government has embarked on a campaign to realign the population imbalance between Kuwaiti citizens and foreign workers. The Kuwait Higher Planning Council has concluded that the large number of expatriate workers are "a threat to national security," and is seeking to redress this imbalance through limiting immigration and curtailing employment benefits. The Kuwaiti government is seeking to invert the pre-Iraqi invasion resident population percentage of approximately 60 percent expatriate workers to at least 60 percent Kuwaiti citizens by 1995.

This very public campaign against foreign workers is particularly reflected in the situation of domestic servants in Kuwait. They are specifically excluded from Kuwait's Private Sector Labor Law No. 38 of 1964, which governs conditions for most workers in the private sector in Kuwait, including expatriates. This exclusion limits any possible legal recourse to criminal or civil sanctions only. Since, MEW notes, these sanctions are very rarely applied, domestic servants often are left with no alternative except to flee to their embassies. Because they generally are unable to to acquire either job transfer papers or exit visas, the maids have languished in the embassies. MEW reports that between May 1991 and April 1992, more than 1,400 Filipino maids fled their employers.

Some of the abuse experienced by the Asian domestic servants is severe. Of the 60 cases directly investigated by MEW, over one-third involved rape or sexual assault. One Filipino maid, Helen Demetillar, was admitted to Mubarak al-Kabir Hospital with her mouth gagged and her hands bound behind her back. She reported being raped by her employer. To escape him, she jumped from a fourth floor window. After treatment for injuries associated with rape and a high fall, she was arrested on unspecified felony charges by the al-Nugra police and then returned, by the police, to her employer.

In most all of the cases MEW investigated, maids also reported non-payment of salaries (debt bondage), passport deprivation and near total confinement.

While recognizing the tremendous upheaval Kuwaiti society has undergone in the past two years and acknowledging the process of social rebuilding and restructuring that is taking place in Kuwait, MEW nonetheless called on the Kuwaiti government to ensure that any abuse and mistreatment of Asian domestic workers is punished, and existing legal remedies available to victims are utilized. MEW also requested the government to provide adequate physical protection against abuse and accord to the Asian maids the due process and equal protection called for under international human rights guarantees.

Turkish Record on Human Rights Remains Dismal

Turkey has had a long history of human rights abuses, especially against its Kurdish citizens in the southeastern region of the country. When newly elected Prime Minister Suleiman Demirel took office in December 1991, he recognized torture as a major problem and promised police stations with "glass walls."

Yet, Western diplomats and human rights activists report, abuses continue, police stations remain impenetrable and human rights improvements remain the exception rather than the norm.

Among the first acts of Demirel's administration were appointment of an ethnic Kurd as state minister for human rights, closure of a high-security jail for political prisoners, and restoration of citizenship to 14,000 persons who fled Turkey after its 1980 coup.

"We are trying to turn a 100-year-old police force into one appropriate for an open, domestic order," Interior Minister Ismat Sezgin explained. "In this process, there may be deviations and things we do not approve of."

Despite the Demirel government's admission that police forces were not cooperating, Nevzat Helaci, head of Turkey's Human Rights Association, complained that "the coalition government's program contained serious promises, but it has not fulfilled them yet." In the first half of 1992, the Human Rights Foundation reported that 11 people died from "mysterious killings" and 194 were shot dead by security forces, many during the Kurdish New Year celebrations last March. Amnesty International (AI) charged that "The widespread systematic practice of torture has continued unabated," and disappearances, parajudicial executions and death-squad killings are increasing.

A true judicial reform package that would discourage some of the worst abuses has been bogged down in legislative gridlock. Initially vetoed by President Turgut Ozal, it remains unclear if the reform package will survive in its present form. It was not voted on before the July recess. One Western diplomat commented that "It seems short-sighted not to have passed it at a time when Turkey's prospects for joining the European Community and the Western European Union were under review."

Carol A. Macha, former AET business manager, is a graduate student in Middle East studies at the University of Texas in Austin.

 

 

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