By Laura Mannering www.amnesty.org HONG KONG (AFP) – Amnesty International on Thursday condemned the “slavery-like” conditions faced by thousands of Indonesian women who work in Hong Kong as domestic staff, accusing authorities of “inexcusable” inaction. Its report, “Exploited for Profit, Failed by Governments”, comes just weeks after a Hong Kong couple were jailed for a shocking string of attacks on their Indonesian housekeeper, including burning her with an iron and beating her with a bike chain. Amnesty found that Indonesians are exploited by recruitment and placement agencies who seize their documents and charge them excessive fees, with false promises of high salaries and good working conditions. The process amounted to trafficking and forced labor, Amnesty said, as the women could not escape once they were in debt and their documents seized. “From the moment the women are tricked into signing up for work in Hong Kong, they are trapped in a cycle of exploitation with cases that amount to modern-day slavery,” said Norma Kang Muico, Asia-Pacific migrants’ rights researcher at Amnesty. She said she feared the problem was widespread in Hong Kong, where some 150,000 Indonesian women work as “domestic helpers”. “A conservative figure would be thousands” based on the research figures and taking into account that the most vulnerable were still kept behind closed doors, she said. The report accuses both Indonesia and Hong Kong of “inexcusable” inaction. “The authorities may point to a raft of national laws that supposedly protect these women but such laws are rarely enforced,” Read More …
