A different set of battle-lines…The Guardian reports via the AP in Delhi:
An Indian diplomat said US authorities subjected her to a strip search, cavity search and DNA swabbing following her arrest on visa charges in New York, despite her “incessant assertions of immunity”.
The case has sparked widespread outrage in India and infuriated the New Delhi government, which revoked privileges for US diplomats to protest against the woman’s treatment. It has cast a pall over India-US relations…
Devyani Khobragade, India’s deputy consul general in New York, was arrested on Thursday outside her daughter’s Manhattan school on charges that she lied on a visa application about how much she paid her housekeeper, an Indian national.
Prosecutors say the maid received less than $3 (£1.80) per hour for her work.
The “widespread outrage in India” is apparently all for the diplomat, none of it for the maid who was paid less than half the minimum wage. Hmm.
In an email published in Indian media on Wednesday, Khobragade said she was treated like a common criminal.
“I broke down many times as the indignities of repeated handcuffing, stripping and cavity searches, swabbing, in a holdup with common criminals and drug addicts were all being imposed upon me despite my incessant assertions of immunity,” she wrote.
Oh, like a common criminal, as opposed to like a rich person who paid her servant poverty-level wages.
Khobragade’s case has touched a nerve in India, where the fear of public humiliation resonates strongly and heavy-handed treatment by the police is normally reserved for the poor. For an educated, middle-class woman to face public arrest and a strip search is almost unimaginable, except in the most brutal crimes.
Well that says it all. Horrible treatment is reserved for the poor, while prosperous people go first class even when arrested. Imagine a system in which all suspects get basic rights and no suspects get to go first class.
Prosecutors say Khobragade claimed on visa application documents that she paid her Indian maid $4,500 a month, but that she actually paid her less than $3 an hour. Khobragade has pleaded not guilty and plans to challenge the arrest on grounds of diplomatic immunity.
Marie Harf, the US state department deputy spokeswoman, said Khobragade did not have full diplomatic immunity. Instead, she has consular immunity from the jurisdiction of US courts only with respect to acts performed in the exercise of consular functions.
Oh gee, so underpaying her servant and lying about it on visa application documents isn’t part of the exercise of consular functions? Who knew.
Funny thing: I read about this via Priyamvada Gopal’s Twitter feed. On this subject, I like her take.
Priyamvada Gopal @PriyamvadaGopal
India–where it’s normal for middle class women to treat poor women like crap but be above the law themselves. Where is the real scandal?
‘I’m elite, not common, like my maid’. Strip-searched Indian diplomat: I was treated like a common criminal by US http://t.gu.com/rSxkY
Indian diplomat underpays servant, misleads on visa app, breaks US law- and SHE’S the victim? And NYPD shd treat *all* with more dignity.
Quite. Well said.
The complication is that a nanny would be given free accommodation and food, have no utilities bills and quite possibly have other benefits as well. Whether Ms Khobragade included these in her estimate of $4500 a month I don’t know, but the actual money paid was only part of the possible benefits provided.
Well, probably, though in fact we don’t know that. Not all nannies are live-in, though one hopes with pay as low as that, this one was. But the accommodation and food could be as crappy as the employer chose to make it, including simply a bed in the baby’s/child’s room and being on call 24 hours a day.
Well, I certainly am not okay with underpaying anyone, but a strip search and a cavity search? How is that appropriate to the crime? And as much as I may not like it, diplomatic immunity is there for a reason, violating it this egregiously (mainly the strip search and the cavity search) seems like a remarkably short sided plan.
While I understand your point Ophelia, the treatment of the rich woman really is barbaric on the part of the US. She lied on a minor point on her VISA application and she’s strip searched? Just because she is obviously spoiled and possible a foul person doesn’t make her treatment any less disgusting.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Ophelia,
Agree with your comments entirely, another demonstration of the attitudes inherent in that abomination, the Hindu caste system, the Indian government’s “diplomatic” retaliation is also irresponsible and rather infantile.
An upper caste Hindu has been the victim of public humiliation, ah, the satisfaction of schadenfreude.
That said, after watching a documentary on US policing it appears that, in some jurisdictions at least, American police are rather aggressive towards citizens suspected of even minor non-violent crimes.
The Labor Dept. has strict limits on what percentage of pay can be in the form of room and board. $3 an hour works out to about $636/mo. In order to “pay” the maid $4500/mo, she would be receiving only 14% of her wages in cash. I assure you, that is also illegal and this woman is STILL a criminal!
Such snobbery displayed here. God help the poor ‘common criminals and drug addicts’. The untouchables. The latter don’t stand a chance in hell against die Übermensch. One can see how the diplomat, Devyani Khobragade would (allegedly) treat a maid with that kind of attitude displayed towards other unfortunate lesser beings.
There is such a class system in India, per se, that someone of the ilk of the maid is inconsequential.
@ 3 & 4 – I agree – that’s why I suggested a system in which all suspects have basic rights; that would naturally include no body-cavity searches unless there’s a real reason. I simply don’t agree with the diplomat’s apparent assumption that such things are for people beneath her.
You’re right, Ophelia, that the diplomat’s sense of privilege is a disgrace, but I still think the bigger story is the abuse of police powers to humiliate someone for no purpose whatsoever (how does a strip- and cavity-search assist in a visa application investigation? did they really think she’d be carrying incriminating documents inside a body cavity?). And the privilege is an important part of the story both ways because if the police are willing do this to a diplomat from a powerful ally, what are they willing to do to some poor schmuck off the street? And would they have inflicted the same search on a male diplomat, or a white diplomat from an Anglophone nation? Did Khobragade’s appearance influence police decisions in this case–did they just get to molest a privileged, attractive woman with impunity? It sounds to me like someone’s rape fantasies just got carried out under the flag of a police investigation.
I agree that cavity searches and strip searches are reprehensible, however it is not as if they did it arbitrarily, the policies are in place to stop drug and weapon smuggling into the prisons, which is actually a real problem. Even lawyers have been caught smuggling guns and drugs in for their clients. I would agree that it would be plainly obvious that this woman was not trying to smuggle things into prison, but they can’t have one policy for her and another for everyone else.
notsont, you say “they can’t have one policy for her and another for everyone else” but I’d take issue on a number of counts.
Firstly, this woman holds an office which the US authorities have to respect. That office holders range from honourable to despicable is a fact of diplomatic relations which nations really do have to accept.
What the US public actually, and amazingly, accept is the indecent treatment that the US authorities dish out to US citizens in these circumstances. No wonder they all want guns to protect themselves from the state.
It should cause outrage but it scarcely raises an eyebrow. I shudder to think what these expectations say about child rearing in the US.
You are correct that there cannot be one policy for her and another for everyone else but the policy could match common standards of decency and it could take into account diplomatic responsibilities.
Sorry if this comes over as anti-American but this really is a huge cultural difference with the UK and I think the US has got it badly wrong. It’s not as if the charges related to the underpayment of her maid either.
notsont:
Of course the police can (and should) have different policies for different people. The question is whether different policies are fair (don’t shoot non-violent suspects) or unfair (don’t shoot whites). If you’re saying that everyone who gets arrested needs to be humiliated and digitally raped, then what you’re saying is that humiliation and digital rape are now the standard tools of police investigators.