Many Africans have taken to social media to express their shock and anger at the disturbing video of an Ethiopian house maid falling from the seventh-floor of a Kuwaiti building as her employer stands there recording her without bothering to help.
In the video, the terrified house help can be heard begging the person recording the video, who’s believed to be her female Kuwaiti employer, to hold her just before her hand slips and she falls on to an iron sheet roof below.
The alleged employer has since been arrested by Kuwaiti authorities, with the Kuwait Society for Human Rights (KSHR) condemning her for not attempting to rescue the maid:
First we saw the Nigerian man being beaten in India now we see a Ethiopian maid pleading for her life in Kuwait.Anti blackness is widespread
— AnotherBrownboy (@Rickytweets1234) March 30, 2017
‘I Wasn’t Attempting Suicide’
Although she sustained several injuries, including a fractured arm, the Ethiopian maid miraculously survived the nasty fall and was immediately rescued by Kuwaiti paramedics.
Speaking to the press at the hospital, where she is currently admitted, the maid refuted claims by her employer that she was attempting to commit suicide, insisting that she was trying to flee from her cruel boss who wanted to kill her.
“I wasn’t trying to commit suicide. I was trying to escape from the woman who tried to kill me,” the maid was quoted by Al Arabiya English.
Local newspaper Alanba reportedly quoted the female employer as saying that she decided to film the incident and share it on social media because she didn’t want to be blamed for her house help’s death.
But KSHR insists that the country’s penal code stipulates that anyone who deliberately refrains from coming to the aid of a person in peril is liable to a jail term of up to three months.
Modern-Day Slavery
Reports of abuse and mistreatment of African domestic workers in the Middle East have become too common, with some house helps accusing their employers of enslaving them.
Many of these domestic workers have died in the hands of their employers while others have sustained lifelong injuries from the abuse.
Reacting to the incident, Mel Fort wrote on Facebook:
Arab employers are the most Barbaric and Evil people in the world! They been doing this for a long time. They starve, rape, they beat until they paralyzed the person, they throw boiling water, sleep deprivation and they electric iron our Filipino domestic helpers (maids).
Many of these victims are poor Africans enticed by the promise of well-paying jobs and an opportunity to escape poverty and joblessness in their own countries.
