Maid ‘kept’ prisoner for 10 years
by the Gulf Times
A Sri Lankan housemaid in Saudi Arabia pleaded in a call to a newspaper to be rescued from her employer she says has kept her imprisoned for the past 10 years, the Saudi newspaper reported yesterday. The Arab News said it received the cry for help from Anista Marie, who left the coastal town of Chilaw in Sri Lanka a decade ago to work in a house in the Saudi capital, Riyad ... Marie said her employers beat her whenever she asked to return to Sri Lanka to see her four children or to be paid. The newspaper said the Sri Lankan embassy would contact Saudi officials about Marie’s case. Around 550,000 Sri Lankans live and work in oil-rich Saudi Arabia, many of them as domestic helpers or drivers. They are a key source of foreign currency for Sri Lanka.