Kuala Lumpur (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The High Court in Malaysia has sentenced a Malaysian husband and wife to death by hanging, for having starved their Indonesian maid to death.
The judge ruled that Fong Kong
Meng (58 years old) and his wife Teoh Ching Yen (56 years), denied food to Isti
Komariyah, 28, during her three years of service in their home.
When
the girl was dying in 2011, she was taken to the hospital weighing only 26
pounds. When
she started working for the Meng family she weighed 46 pounds.
The case is just
one of many of abuses against the two million Indonesians working in Malaysia
as domestic servants, on plantations, in construction and industry. Often
their employers are accused of making them work long hours, abusing them by
torture, beatings and sexual violence.
The
Indonesian embassy in Kuala Lumpur estimates that there are at least 400
thousand women working as domestics in the country, over half illegally. The
Indonesian workers and laborers make up almost half of all foreigners working
in Malaysia.
In 2011, the governments of Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta signed an agreement for better treatment of Indonesian migrants. The agreement provides for a guaranteed day off per week and a minimum wage of 700 ringgit (210 U.S. dollars). Several human rights organizations, however, complain that it is difficult to check every situation. Indeed, government controls on migrants have slowed down the hiring of new workers a lot, encouraging illegal immigration.