AREN'T PEOPLE SAME EVERYWHERE!

Indonesian escapes Saudi execution; Returns to riches & is hated
Trungtum: An Indonesian maid is beheaded in Saudi Arabia. For a second one on death row, strangers at home rally to her cause and raise tens of thousands of dollars. She not only escapes the sword, she’s now rich. And hated.
Darsem binti Dawud Tawar, 22, shot to fame earlier this year in Indonesia after spending more than three years in a Saudi prison accused of killing a man who allegedly tried to rape her. But when she safely returned to her small fishing village, the public tide swiftly turned against her.
She’s accused of living in luxary, building a fancy house along the dusty track that passes for Main Street, throwing around cash and draping herself in the jewels.
“She acts like a bling-bling celebrity now,” said Siti Patonah, a 32-year-old vendor, scrubbing apples and watermelons at a market as five or six housewives gather. “It’s true,” one says. “Like a nut that forgot its shell.”
The execution in June of a 53-year-old grandmother, Ruyati binti Satubim, sparked mass protests in Indonesia and prompted the government’s first effort to do more to protect the 1.2 million women who flock to Saudi Arabia every year.
But Darsem’s case has stolen the show, sparking fierce debate here on whether she should donate her windfall.
Life’s been anything but easy for Darsem. She dropped out of school before finishing 6th grade and moved to, Jakartha. By 15, she was married and pregnant and mother later she went to the Middle East, first Oman, then UAE and finally Saudi Arabia.
“My husband didn’t have a job, my father was getting old, I thought it was our best chance,” Darsem said. She refuses to talk about what happened next. But according to Saudi media reports, Darsem killed her employer’s relative, who was mentally ill, with a hammer to the head after he attacked her. She then threw his body in a watertank and covered it with concrete.
Darsem spent the next 31/2 years in a Saudi jail. But her luck turned when newspapers and activists on Facebook and twitter championed her cause.
The government scraped together the $500,000 demanded by the family of Darsem’s victim for her release. The public also chipped in, when she finally came home, a TV station handed over $140,000 from its viewers.
That’s a fortune in the predominantly Muslim nation of 240 million. In Trungtum, a struggling, coastal town Darsem may as well be a millionaire.
Everyone has a suggestion as to how she should spend the money, she said. “But why should I give them anything? They did nothing to help my family when I was gone,” she says.

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