Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Abused

Do you remember the Korean neighbour I mentioned in my older blog? The one who kept complaining about our renovation noise?

Well, the day after we moved in, I was carrying Solomon and looking out the window. Our play room window overlooked her balcony and I saw her maid putting out clothes to dry. I was shocked to see her withdrawn face was blue black and strained to see if they were injuries or perhaps birthmarks.

Straight away, I asked Hubby to come and have a look. Our window was rather close to their balcony, and I'm pretty sure you could see us peeping from there, but she seemed not to care and was totally emotionless. Hubby also thought they looked like injuries, but we were not 100% sure of anything yet.

Later, I asked my maid if she had seen the maid next door. She said no, and I told her what I saw. She was aghast and immediately told me she heard her screaming and there was also someone shouting in Korean about a week ago when she was cleaning our new place. (She has also worked for a Korean family in the past.)

I guess this strengthened our theory that the maid was being abused, what more with the aggressive nature of the lady, which we have experienced ourselves. I was deliberating on what to do. We couldn't leave a fellow human being to be abused like that, yet I didn't want to cause too much trouble. She could end up in jail and she had two primary-school aged children to take care of (her husband is abroad). Also, if she found out we reported her, she might just go crazy and harm my family or something!

Hubby was more decisive and insisted straight away that we inform the Indonesian embassy. That night, when we came home, there were police cars outside. When we reached our floor, there were quite a few policemen outside the lift with the maid and the lady. She was aggressive even with the police! She was shouting at them and pushing the officers!! She was seriously one tough nut!

I hurriedly brought the kids inside and closed the door. I saw her children looking on from the corridor with another Korean family and one of them were crying and I felt some guilt and sympathy for the kids. My maid saw the state that the other maid was in and was so shocked she looked like she was going to cry.

I knew then that we did the right thing. It is our responsibility to uphold the basic rights of our fellow homo sapiens and we have to be strong and decisive when the oppressed are in need. After all, we claim to be such civillized creatures! *sigh* Yet we can treat another human like an animal just because he/she is different in race, culture and/or religion!

So anyway, we found out later from newspaper reports that she was indeed abused and sometimes not fed, and if so was given rancid food. The important thing is that she has been taken away and is now safe and sound. We do not know what will happen to the Korean lady after this. I suppose she deserves the penalty, but I hope it will not be too harsh, for her children's sake.

I also really hope she doesn't stumble across my blog!! :)

Anyway, just knowing we helped the girl (she is only 19) makes me feel better. Here's a pic of her in an online paper. (Imagine it was your own daughter! I'd go beat the lady up myself!)

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