Embassy slaves.

One long-hidden Washington scandal recently emerged in two news stories. It is that foreign diplomats stationed in Washington, or at least some of them, practice slavery. They bring foreign nationals here as servants, and abuse them in various ways under the protection of diplomatic immunity and an American media that has been incurious for far too long.

But now we have two different items in the Washington Post. One story, by Henri E. Cauvin, describes the wife of a Kuwaiti diplomat, who, angry at an Indian servant, Mani Kumari Sabbithi, for a mistake made in preparing a meal, pulled Sabbithi's hair and threatened to cut off her tongue, as the diplomat himself screamed at Sabbithi, pushed her to the floor, and knocked her out.

Post columnist Colbert King describes a Paraguayan woman forced to work seventy-seven hours a week for an official of the Argentinean embassy. King points out that the State Department routinely sides with employers in these cases, on the grounds of diplomatic immunity. King argues that employment contracts could come under the "professional and commercial activity" exception to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. I hope Condoleezza Rice is listening to him.