AUDIO: Maid denies Saudi accusations; reveals how she came through airport
September 2, 2010 10:11 am
Tortured Sri Lankan maid Ariyawathie
denied Saudi accusations that she is lying and her story is baseless.
Ariyawathie has revealed how she was taken at 2am to the airport and how when
the alarms went off at the barrier no one questioned her.
Earlier, Saudi authorities denied
her allegations of torture.
“The employer’s wife used to hold me
down and the daughter held a knife to my neck while the employer stuck heated
nails to my body. This torture went on for months,” LP Ariyawathie told BBC
Sandeshaya.
Saad al-Badah, the head of a Saudi
government department responsible for foreign workers, has told Saudi state
television Tuesday night that Ariyawathi’s allegations were baseless and
amounted to blackmail.
“The whole story is baseless” said
al-Badah. “It is nothing but blackmail by Sri Lankan labour firms.”
Al-Badah said the companies have
rejected new labour regulations and salary restrictions imposed by the Saudi
government.
Abdel-Hadi Abaeri, head of the
security department at the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority has told the media
that they received no reports of such abuse at the kingdom’s airports.
Ariyawathie told the BBC that she
was afraid to say anything before she left Saudi Arabia as her employer had
asked her not to.
Afraid to talk
“I was taken to the airport around
two in the morning. The alarms went off when I walked through the barriers. No
one questioned me. I was in so much pain, I just wanted to come home”.
Doctors in Sri Lanka have said they
removed 13 nails and five needles from LG Ariyawathi after she returned from
Saudi Arabia last month. The items had been driven into Ariyawathi’s legs and
forehead, they said.
The maid says that even at Colombo
airport, she was setting off the security alarms. “Even in Colombo, no one
questioned me. If they did, I would have told them about how I was tortured”.
Embassy officials
Al-Badah said authorities have
received no complaints from neighbors of the Saudi couple to substantiate the
allegations.
Ariyawathie say that she was afraid
for her life, that she did not even talk to the embassy official who issued her
with the tavel documents for her to leave Riyadh.
“He asked me if anything was wrong,
Baaba (my employer) put his finger to his lips and signed me to not to talk”.
Ariyawathie told the BBC Sinhala Service.