Extreme cruelty of medieval age in Singapore

SINGAPORE: A senior forensic pathologist on Monday (Jul 24) testified to the severely malnourished state of a Myanmar maid when she was abused to death in 2016, describing her muscles as having wasted away.

There was no fat at all surrounding the organs in Ms Piang Ngaih Don's stomach cavity and her bones were jutting out in a state of severe emaciation, said Dr George Paul, who has 42 years of experience in his field....

 Dr Paul had performed the autopsy of 24-year-old Piang Ngaih Don, who died at the hands of Chelvam's wife Gaiyathiri Murugayan and her mother Prema S Naraynasamy....

The victim had died of hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy, a type of brain damage, following severe blunt trauma to the neck, after being tied to a window grille and starved for weeks.

On top of regular assaults, she was also given very little food, at times surviving on single slices of bread soaked in water and left by the sink for her....

 "The deceased was very emaciated, with hardly any flesh on her cheek, on her face, and a scrawny neck, with her collarbones all sticking out," said Dr Paul.  CNA

 

Reading the evidence on how this poor little girl was ill treated as a maid in Singapore is extremely painful. This poor soul did not die instantly but suffered for months, beaten, starved, isolated, chained and deprived of all communication and access to help. It was a slow, painful, silent and horrifying ordeal that led to death, like an abandon little animal left to die in loneliness.

Could this tragedy be prevented in modern first world city state? Could some regulations or processes be adopted to prevent such cruelty from repeating again? How can help be so far away in densely populated Singapore without anyone noticing something evil was happening near them? How could 3 adults, could be more, went through such an inhuman process to ill treat and beaten up a hapless little girl that traveled thousands of miles here to be a lived in maid, to serve the family? Did any of them has any conscience, sense of guilt or pity for the pitiful girl that they were beating and starving and chained to the window grill, right before them, crying silently, alone, and dying?

Would MOM introduce some measures or procedures to keep track of maids working here, defenceless little girls, in a strange land, thousands or hundreds of kilometres away from their loved ones, at the mercy of employers that could be inhuman or animals in human forms, to protect their safety and well beings? 

It is better late than never, to save a few poor lives along the way.

PS. This case is back in the news for the trial of ex police officer, Chelvam, the husband of Gaiyathiri Murugaya.