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The parents of Rizana Nafeek are pleading
for their daughter's life |
About seven million maids from the Philippines are working overseas as domestic helpers.
Women from Sri Lanka and Indonesia also leave home in huge numbers to work abroad.
They are one of the biggest sources of foreign currency for their governments.
But many thousands of them return home empty handed, often worse off than before they left.
101 East looks at the case of Rizana Nafeek, a Sri Lankan teenage maid in Saudi Arabia.
She was sentenced to death by beheading after confessing to killing a four-month-old Saudi boy in 2005.
She later retracted her statement saying it had been made under duress and an appeal has been lodged in the Saudi Arabian courts.
To discuss that case and the plight of Asian domestic helpers working abroad, presenter Teymoor Nabili is joined by Keheliya Rambukella, Sri Lanka's foreign employment, promotion and welfare minister, Ellene Sana from Migrant Forum Asia and Basil Fernando, the executive director of the Hong Kong-based Asian Human Rights Commission.
Watch this episode of 101 East here:
Part 1:
Part 2: