Ethiopia: Stop the torture of our sisters immediately!

Posted by Uncategorized Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Tedla Asfaw

Ethiopian young women who traveled to Middle East and Gulf Nations working as maids have increased dramatically for the last two decades. These young women abuse has also increased dramatically, some of them end up dead, rapped and tortured and the video clip of Al Jazerra’s TV, less than five minutes, this week showed one young woman tortured on boiling water by her female boss/master.

The victim body was totally burned and it seems the lady did not receive adequate medical care. Without Al Jazerra’s professional investigative journalism we would never have known about the suffering of this sister. There are many sisters who are suffering as we speak and it is time for our community to stand with the victims.

Organized protest should start immediately against those countries who allowed this abuse by not taking legal actions against the perpetrators of this crime. This morning I spent few minutes with the media representative of United Arab Emirates(UAE) in Washington DC on telephone to inform her what I saw on Al Jazerra’s clip that is posted on many Ethiopian websites.

The UAE media representative unfortunately has not seen the clip. However, she was disturbed by what I told her. A woman/master doing to another woman/slave who is under total control reminded us the day of slavery which is still fresh in some Arab countries household. They hate towards Ethiopian women most of them Christians might have made things even worst.

Moreover, some of these Arab countries are also “buying” our best women and men athletes to run for them. Our big athletes are also running for big prize in these Arab countries. All of them have responsibly to use their star power to come out and speak against the abuse of Ethiopian women which is rampant in the Arab land.

The diaspora Ethiopians power to expose this crime and call for justice can make big difference and I urge every Ethiopian to come out and protest by calling and writing to the UAE embassies all over the world immediately. For those who are in USA they can call 202-243-2448, media representative of UAE, and registered their anger and call for those who did the crime to be punished .

Al Jazeera video documentary on an Ethiopian domestic worker who has been battered, tortured and abused by her employer in the Middle East (UEA).