‘I felt like a prisoner’: the domestic workers ‘trapped’ by Canberra’s diplomatic employers

In the three years Priyanka Danaratna worked in the Sri Lankan embassy, she had only two days off: she spent them in hospital after being burned while working in the kitchen. Photograph: Settapongd Dee-ud/Getty Images

Priyanka Danaratna was invisible in Australia.

Behind the closed doors of a house in Canberra’s leafy diplomatic quarter, she toiled as a domestic servant. She spoke no English, had her passport seized and could not leave the house without permission.