Topic

Erwiana Sulistyaningsihi

Erwiana Sulistyaningsih is a former Indonesian domestic worker who in January 2014 accused her Hong Kong employer of subjecting her to six months of physical abuse. Photographs of Erwiana's injuries quickly spread through social media and led to public outrage.

Advertisement
  • Court records show the beautician, ordered to pay HK$809,430 to her victim and later HK$200,000 in legal costs to the Department of Justice, filed for bankruptcy in May
  • Her abuse case drew worldwide attention to the plight of Hong Kong helpers working in dire conditions
videocam

The Singaporeans jailed this week for ordering their domestic worker to eat her own vomit were not a one-off. From Hong Kong’s Erwiana to an Indonesian beaten with bamboo, here are Asia’s most notorious cases of helper abuse.

videocam
Advertisement
Advertisement

Law Wan-tung was jailed for six years in February 2015 over abuse of the Indonesian domestic worker that made global headlines and put working conditions of helpers in Hong Kong under spotlight.

Former civil servant, who threw scalding water over her Bangladeshi helper in 2014, kept a “punishment book” listing fines imposed on replacement maid for mistakes, including failing to marinade a cucumber and using the word “just”.

The Hong Kong judge who ordered Law Wan-tung to pay HK$170,000 says the beautician’s application ‘must be refused’ in ‘the interests of justice’.

Hong Kong people’s racial prejudice against Filipino and Indonesian workers must give way, especially in the face of evidence that race is essentially a fiction.

Protest over ‘rampant’ problem comes two weeks after Indonesian domestic helper died in Malaysia reportedly following torture by her employer

District Court judge Winnie Tsui awards the Indonesian the full amount she sought, disregarding employer’s latest assertion that the former helper overstated her injuries

videocam