Nirmala Bonat
While Americans are reeling from the reports of Iraqi POWs abused by US military personnel, Malaysians are reeling from a lady's horrific abuse of her 19-year-old Indonesian maid. The case made news headlines on Thursday.
Found by a condominum guard who saw her sitting and crying on a staircase, with ugly bruises all over her swollen face and bleeding from the head and mouth, Nirmala was also severely burnt and scalded all over her whole body, including her breasts and back. She told police that her employer's wife had abused her daily over the past five months, burning her with a hot iron, pouring boiling water on her and hitting her with a clothes-hanger. Before the beatings and burnings began, her employer's wife would close the doors and windows to prevent Nirmala's screams from being heard by neighbours. Nirmala would only be given medication if she were to ask for it and had been expected to wake up at 6am every day despite her injuries and physical condition.
Her employer's wife, a 36-year-old housewife, has been charged with four counts of causing grevious hurt to Nirmala and pleaded not guilty to all four. She was denied bail and remains under custody. Nirmala is being sheltered at the Indonesian embassy.
What is there to say? I think it's all the more shocking because it happened in our urban society. The employers were described as "upper-middle-class" people. What's more, Nirmala's employer has lodged a police report, claiming that her wounds were self-inflicted and that she'd stolen $10,000 from his home. Look at the pictures! Which person in his or her right mind would inflict those kinds of wounds on his or her own body?
Upper-middle-class people. Could have been one of us. Could have been a colleague, or an acquaintance. Someone you've seen at your club. Someone you brushed by in that new boutique at the shopping mall. Scary, isn't it? Makes me wonder what goes on behind the perfect masks I see on every face. What are they like in the privacy of their home? What are they like when those masks crack and fall off?
I've not witnessed maid abuse with my own eyes, but I HAVE seen people treat their maids like slaves. Once I was visiting a home and was offered a drink, as is the usual custom. After drinking, I took the cup into the kitchen and washed it. "Why are you doing that?" my hostess asked, coming into the room. "Just leave it for the maid to wash!" Truthfully, I'd feel guilty letting the maid wash it when I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself. After all, it's just a single cup...
Later: "Dear, please tell the maid to take the clothes in, it's going to rain," said the lady to her husband, who was sitting on the couch watching TV. Why ask the maid to do it? Is the guy doing something so important that he can't take the clothes in himself? It's not like the maid is very free, you know. She was going about doing her usual housework.
And I overheard another lady talking to her sister, who happened to live in a house on the opposite row: "I won't have need of the maid this afternoon, because my children will be sleeping. So I'll send her over to you and she can help you clean the house... after all, there's nothing for her to do over here." As if the maid must be kept busy at all times.
Incidences like these make my blood boil. Maids are seldom treated with dignity and respect. I've seen them in shopping malls, charged with taking care of the children while their employer's wives shop unencumbered. The maids are so often dressed in ugly, mismatched, ill-fitting clothes; either cast-offs, hand-me-downs or obviously cheap stuff.
It's too easy to look down on them as poor, lowly educated, and perhaps not very intelligent people. It's too easy to be contemptuous and feel you have the right to order them to do your bidding, just because you pay their wages. It's too easy to give them lousy things and reason that they should be thankful for whatever they get, or that it doesn't matter because, after all, "she's only a maid". It's just too easy.
I pray I'll never take the people around me for granted... even if one of them is "only a maid".