The Indonesian government and advocacy groups for Indonesian migrant workers have protested against the execution of an Indonesian domestic worker in Saudi Arabia
The Indonesian government and advocacy groups for Indonesian migrant workers have protested against the execution of an Indonesian domestic worker in Saudi Arabia, Tuti Tursilawati, eight years after she was sentenced to death for murdering her employer.
Born in Majalengka, West Java, Tuti left her hometown for Saudi Arabia in 2009 to work as a caregiver for an elderly man in Ta'if.
In 2010, she was arrested and sentenced to death for the murder of her employer’s father, who she beat to death with a stick. Tuti claimed she had done it in self-defense to protect herself from sexual abuse.
On Monday (29/10), the 33-year-old was executed without the Saudi Arabian government giving any prior notice to their Indonesian counterpart or to Tuti's family, raising protests from rights groups and Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi.
The execution was the fourth time Saudi Arabia has failed to give any notice before carrying out a death penalty on an Indonesian migrant worker in the past three years.
Retno immediately called her Saudi counterpart Adel bin Ahmed Al Jubeir to express her disapproval of the execution – of which she was only notified after it took place.
Migrant Care, an advocacy group for Indonesian migrant workers, has called on the Manpower Ministry to scrap a recent agreement with its Saudi counterpart to send Indonesian migrant workers to the kingdom.
Community Legal Aid Institute (LBHM) urged President Jokowi to take a decisive action to respond to the incident, and evaluate bilateral relations between Indonesia and Saudi Arabia, including those relating to the placement of Indonesian migrant workers in the kingdom.
It also calls the execution a "serious violation of human rights" and a "failure to heed the rules of international diplomacy."
Tuti was not the only migrant worker to have been executed by the Saudi government this year. In March, Zaini Misri was also executed without any prior notice to Indonesian officials.
According to data from Kemenlu, 188 Indonesian workers faced death sentences overseas between 2011 and 2017. Data from Migrant Care show 72 percent of migrant workers who face the death penalty are women.

In this fatal case of the irregular execution of the death sentence, the only thing that helps is: no migrant workers, especially women, to be posted! Should the Saudis see for themselves who serves, cooks and looks after them!
ReplyDeleteAnd if a woman defends herself against abuse in self-defense, should she be to blame?