The diplomat also deprived Huayta and her twelve-year-old daughter Carla of adequate food. The Bolivian diplomat confiscated her passport, forbade Huayta to leave the house alone and to ever use the phone. Huayta was required to work at least sixteen hours a day without a moment of rest. In violation of her employment contract, Huayta was paid 200 dollars per month. When Begum found the opportunity and the courage to escape, she fled the apartment with no money to her name, no passport and speaking no English.Īnother petitioner from Bolivia, Otilia Luz Huayta, and her daughter Carla worked for a Bolivian diplomat and her family in suburban Maryland. They forced her to sleep on the hard floor without a blanket or a mattress, and when the Ahmeds had overnight guests, they made her sleep underneath the dining room table so that the guests wouldn’t see her. The Ahmeds forbade Begum to leave the apartment, confiscated her passport, and demanded that she not speak to or be seen by guests to their house. The money was not paid to her directly, but sent to her son in Bangladesh. They tried to take from me my dignity and humanity, and they got away with it because of diplomatic immunity.”īegum worked for the Bangladeshi diplomat and his wife for sixteen to nineteen hours a day for which she was paid 29 dollars per month. “Instead, for two and a half years, the Ahmeds kept me as a prisoner in their house and made me a slave to their demands. Shamim Ahmed, a diplomat from the Bangladesh Mission to the United Nations. with the promise of a good job,” said Raziah Begum, a petitioner from Bangladesh and Andolan member who worked for F.A.
The abuses suffered by the petitioners while employed by diplomats include extreme wage and hour violations with no vacation, free time or holidays virtual imprisonment in the homes of their employers with no ability to communicate with the outside world passport deprivation physical and emotional abuse and invasion of privacy. must ensure that these women know their rights and can seek compensation when those rights have been violated.” “Instead of handing these diplomats a free pass to abuse their domestic workers, the U.S. gives diplomats immunity for enslaving their domestic workers without taking any steps to protect them or provide redress, diplomats can continue to exploit their domestic help,” said Claudia Flores, an attorney with ACLU Women’s Rights Project. to adopt a system to protect and compensate domestic workers abused by diplomats. The petition charges that the United States has violated the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man by failing to ensure that foreign officials with diplomatic immunity are prohibited from committing egregious human rights abuses. Their employers were diplomats from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Botswana, Qatar, Argentina, and Chile, respectively. The six workers are from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Indonesia, Paraguay, and Chile. The American Civil Liberties Union, together with Global Rights and the Immigration/Human Rights Clinic of the University of North Carolina School of Law, filed the petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on behalf of six women and three organizations that provide services to domestic workers employed by diplomats: Andolan, Break the Chain Campaign and CASA of Maryland. domestic law denies them their rights and a way to seek justice. by foreign diplomats petitioned an international commission today because U.S. NEW YORK –Domestic workers who were exploited and abused in the U.S. ACLU and Human Rights Organizations File Petition Following Unprecedented Expulsion of Kuwaiti Diplomat by State Department