Went for better life, came back dead
Divorcing her abusive husband just two and a half years into marriage, Khoko Moni took up a job in Oman as a domestic help with hopes for a new lease of life.
But as fate would have it, she endured further physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her employers. Barely two months after she went there, she was brought back home, but in a coffin.
Now her 60-year-old mother Mariam Begum is going from door to door for justice, saying it was a murder being passed off as a suicide.
“Khoko has a three-year-old son. Who will take care of the boy? I am completely undone,” sobbed Mariam as she talked to The Daily Star recently.
Khoko, 27, was working at a Gazaria factory in Munshiganj following the separation in early 2014 when two relatives convinced her to travel to the Arab country for a monthly wage of Tk 20,000.
A broker, Abdul Quader, who is also a distant relative staying in Oman, processed her papers through an agency in Fakirerpool, and assured Khoko that the employer was a “good man”.
This was proved wrong a day or two after Khoko reached Muscat, the capital of Oman, on November 27 last year when the employer raped her in the dead of the night, Mariam alleged recalling phone conversations with her daughter.
Khoko complained to the employer's wife, but it resulted in beatings. She had to work 18 to 20 hours a day not only in the house of her employer but also for two of his relatives, who lived far apart, said the grieving mother.
“My daughter would call me to bring her back home fast. She would say that she was often being beaten.”
The Omani death certificate was based on a police letter stating it was a suicide by hanging on December 25.
“Why should my daughter commit suicide? I don't believe it,” said Mariam, adding, Khoko had shown no such signs while talking to her the day before.
The employer was Mohammed Khalfan Khamis Al Hanai, according to the death certificate sent with the body. He could not be reached for comment.
Mariam said she could not file a case and get an autopsy done as Motijheel and Paltan police sought travel documents that Khoko had carried with her.
This allegation cannot be verified as she could not name the person she contacted, police said.
Khoko was buried in her Gazaria hometown on January 18, the day the body arrived.
Two days later, Labour Counsellor at the Bangladesh Embassy in Muscat Zahed Ahmed told The Daily Star by phone that the embassy had sought an autopsy report and engaged a law firm to find out the cause of the death. The embassy had not been informed of the abuse, he said. “We could have rescued her.”
Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program Executive Director Shakirul Islam said relatives of domestic workers in Gulf countries frequently made complaints of abuse, not of suicide.
The organisation recorded 125 complaints in the last five months concerning workers from seven districts, he added.
Oman hosts about seven lakh Bangladeshis, including 30,000 female domestic workers.
Since 1991, more than 5.5 lakh women have gone abroad for jobs, mostly as domestic workers. The annual average in the last two years stands at about one lakh, up from just 2,000 in 1991.
Rights bodies say female domestic workers are more vulnerable to abuse while protective measures put in place by the Bangladeshi authorities are not adequate.
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