Sri in singapore

Sri (not her real name) is a 30 year old Indonesian domestic worker in Singapore.

“I was not allowed to go outside. I never went outside, not even to dump the garbage. I was always inside. I didn’t even go to the market. I felt like I was in jail. It was truly imprisonment. I was not allowed to turn the radio on either…I could only see the outside world when I hung clothes to dry….My employer said ‘Don’t speak to anyone. Don’t speak to friends or go to the neighbors.’ I wasn’t allowed to contact my relatives. I worked for three years. I had nobody to talk to.

"I only ate once a day at 7pm. I never took lunch… If we were eating chicken wings the employer would tell me to buy three for the kids and then there wouldn’t be enough for me. I would drink a lot of water.

"My employers used only abusive words. They didn’t hit me…but they would say things like, ‘Why don’t you jump out of the window? Rather than thinking about your parents, it would be better if you just committed suicide.’ The wife was really angry and used bad words. She called me a pig, a prostitute, an easy woman.

"I asked my employers if I could return to Indonesia and they said no. I was not happy or comfortable and I wanted to go back. They said ‘You have to make sure you finish your contract before you go back’.”

Taken from Maid to Order: Ending Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore, Nisha Varia, Human Rights Watch, 2005.