Tortured Sri Lankan maid Ariyawathie denied Saudi accusations that she is lying and her story is baseless. Ariyawathie has revealed how she was taken at 2am to the airport and how when the alarms went off at the barrier no one questioned her.
Earlier, Saudi authorities denied her allegations of torture.
“The employer’s wife used to hold me down and the daughter held a knife to my neck while the employer stuck heated nails to my body. This torture went on for months,” LP Ariyawathie told BBC Sandeshaya.
Saad al-Badah, the head of a Saudi government department responsible for foreign workers, has told Saudi state television Tuesday night that Ariyawathi’s allegations were baseless and amounted to blackmail.
“The whole story is baseless” said al-Badah. “It is nothing but blackmail by Sri Lankan labour firms.”
Al-Badah said the companies have rejected new labour regulations and salary restrictions imposed by the Saudi government.
Abdel-Hadi Abaeri, head of the security department at the Saudi Civil Aviation Authority has told the media that they received no reports of such abuse at the kingdom’s airports.
Ariyawathie told the BBC that she was afraid to say anything before she left Saudi Arabia as her employer had asked her not to.
Afraid to talk
“I was taken to the airport around two in the morning. The alarms went off when I walked through the barriers. No one questioned me. I was in so much pain, I just wanted to come home”.
Doctors in Sri Lanka have said they removed 13 nails and five needles from LG Ariyawathi after she returned from Saudi Arabia last month. The items had been driven into Ariyawathi’s legs and forehead, they said.
The maid says that even at Colombo airport, she was setting off the security alarms. “Even in Colombo, no one questioned me. If they did, I would have told them about how I was tortured”.
Embassy officials
Al-Badah said authorities have received no complaints from neighbors of the Saudi couple to substantiate the allegations.
Ariyawathie say that she was afraid for her life, that she did not even talk to the embassy official who issued her with the tavel documents for her to leave Riyadh.
Posted on Thursday, September 02, 2010 @ 15:02:01 JST by admin
