Alleged Abuse Costs Emirati Man His Penis

An Ethiopian maid struck back at her allegedly abusive employer in Dubai, slicing off the Emirati man's penis in response to harassment, the 7DAYS daily on Wednesday quoted the emirate's police as saying.

Police responded to a call from the man and "found him bleeding badly. His housemaid had chopped off his private parts using a knife", 7DAYS quoted a Dubai police official as saying of the attack on Monday.

"She claimed the man used to abuse and harass her. On the day of the incident, she claims he asked her to give him a massage. She got angry, went to the kitchen to get a knife and attacked him," the official said.

The maid has been charged with assault, the paper said, while the Emirati man is recovering in hospital. It was not clear if his severed member had been re-attached.

The UAE and other Gulf countries have come in for repeated criticism from human rights groups over their treatment of millions of foreign workers, mostly Asians.

Rights groups and activists have reported various cases of employers torturing maids in neighboring Saudi Arabia.

The watchdogs have also sharply criticized the sponsorship system, still in force in most Gulf states, by which workers must be sponsored by their employer and which has been likened to modern-day slavery.