•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

Jakarta. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is investigating the torture and death of an Indonesian migrant worker in Kuwait.

According to an official report by an Indonesian forensic team, domestic worker Sariah, 37, from Indramayu, West Java, died from abuse and not of natural causes, as claimed by Kuwaiti doctors.

The team from Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital concluded Sariah was beaten with a blunt object, including the likely fatal blow to the back of her head.

Ministry official Teguh Wardoyo said on Friday it was following up on the results of the autopsy but was quick to defend the Indonesian Embassy in Kuwait.

Teguh said if its official report contained errors, it was the fault of the Kuwaiti doctor who said Sariah died from natural causes.

Sariah left for Kuwait in 2008 and changed employers three times. She told her family her boss had routinely abused her.

In her last phone conversation, she said she has been beaten and locked in a room without meals.

Sariah was in a critical condition when her employer took her to Al Adan Hospital in Kuwait on June 30. She died eight days later. The hospital said she died from heart complications and a damaged artery.

Kuwait’s ambassador in Jakarta, Nasser Al-Enizi, was not available for comment.

Anis Hidayah, director of labor watchdog Migrant Care, said Sariah’s family had contacted the organization after she was admitted to hospital in a coma.

The group then contacted the Foreign Ministry and the Indonesian Embassy in Kuwait, which it said had failed to investigate despite solid evidence of torture and sustained beatings at the hands of her employer.

Anis said it was Migrant Care, not the Indonesian government, that had been forced to act to ensure an autopsy was completed.

“The government should perform an autopsy on every migrant worker who dies while in the care of their employers, even if the hospital reports from foreign countries say they died of natural causes,” she said.

“The hospital in Kuwait lied to the Indonesian government about Sariah’s death and it might not be the first lie foreign hospitals have told us.”

Indonesian migrant workers often suffer terrible abuse in the Middle-East, and the perpetrators seem to act with impunity.

Anis said that according to its data, not a single foreign employer from a Middle-East country had been found guilty of abusing a domestic worker.

She hoped Sariah’s death “could be the starting point to investigate other deaths and we hope the government will be more attentive to our workers.”

Teguh said the ministry had asked the agency that sent Sariah to Kuwait to act responsibility. “Surely she has insurance,” Teguh said.

Rosstiawati, director of protection for overseas workers at the Ministry of Manpower and Transmigration, said the ministry was still investigating.

“This case is still in process,” Rosstiawati said. The ministry would also keep “close communication with the foreign affairs ministry and the Indonesian embassy in Kuwait.”