SUMIATI'S lot in life has been truly pitiful. She left her poverty-stricken village in West Nusa Tenggara to work in faraway Saudi Arabia so she could earn some money to help out her family. What she got instead were severe beatings and inhuman treatment by her employers: her body covered with bruises and her upper lip cut with scissors.

Another domestic worker, Kikim Komalasari, from Cianjur, West Java, also went to this Middle Eastern country to