Millions of poor people from all over the world come to Arab kingdoms to work because they are poor and need work for a living. These poor workers give their blood and build these brutish peoples' homes and palaces, work in their factories and infra-structure buildings and in exchange they offer them a little petrodollar and the most inhuman treatment that we read everyday in international newspapers.
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Allah must have committed a great sin by giving so much oil to these Saudis and the Arabs, the worst mankind in the world I suppose. With their oil money they have built their societies that are so inhuman and so much devoid of human conscience! Millions of poor people from all over the world come to Arab kingdoms to work because they are poor and need work for a living. These poor workers give their blood and build these brutish peoples' homes and palaces, work in their factories and infra-structure buildings and in exchange they offer them a little petrodollar and the most inhuman treatment that we read everyday in international newspapers. The western media, if and when something bad happens in China, Myanmar or in Zimbabwe or countries they do not like, are very vocal and go on reporting and condemning such things for weeks or months but they speak very mildly the inhuman things the Saudis and the other rich Arab countries do to people from poor countries working for peanuts in these oil rich Arab lands.
The Arabs treat very respectfully to Europeans and especially their employees from Western Europe and North America but their behaviour to people from poor countries are subhuman and most brutish. This is very much true when they employ women from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and other countries in Asia as home maids. They employ these poor women for very little money and force them to work 15-16 hours a day. Often they do not get any break and work 7 days a week. Their work-hours could be any time at day or at night.
These women get their jobs paying good amount as fees to local employment agencies in their own countries. These local employment agencies arrange jobs in collusion with similar organizations in Arab countries. The usual practice is to pay the local agents, quite substantial amount by the local standard and often these poor people arrange the amount by selling the land or such small properties they own, get the job and come to work in an Arab country. On arrival the domestic women workers need to surrender their passports and other documents to the employers, start working and with the works the real ordeal begins.
Many foreign domestic maids in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries work in harsh circumstances and very often suffer abuse by their employers. Often they do not get the salary they are promised, they need to work very long hours every day and no compensation for long working hours and no complain to be made but to work, work and work as ordered.
The ordeal of young women are further more complicated for the employers' sex lust. Often the employers sexually violate the young employees by force and making any complain or reporting it means inviting serious problems. Generally there is nobody to listen to them and what the employers say are the only truths. In Arab countries justice system does not work when it involves foreign workers from the poor countries. In March 2007 I met 4 women from Bangladesh at Doha airport while flying by Qatar Airlines from Frankfurt to Dhaka who told me their ordeal in Saudi Arabia. Each of these women paid above 80,000 or so Taka to get jobs as domestic servant in Saudi kingdom and on arrival they faced the same horrible situation. They worked 3 months in the kingdom and were not paid a cent for their hard work. The employers had something else in their minds until the moment came for real action.
These women were not young and they wanted to send them back home. So they let them work day and night long 3 months to earn enough for the air ticket to Dhaka and then they bought one way tickets for each one of them and then bundled them home to Bangladesh via Doha. I could see they were lucky. At least they were not sexually molested, thanks to their advanced age.
Today (23d May 2008) I read in BBC a tragic story of an Indonesian woman, Nour Miyati, and unfortunately the poor woman was not so lucky. This 25 years old woman contracted gangrene after allegedly being tied up for a month and left without food in 2005. She had to have several fingers and toes amputated. Human Rights Watch says that Miyati was treated in a Riyadh hospital in March 2005 for gangrene, malnourishment and other injuries. The case was taken up by human rights group and the cruel employer family was brought to justice. Then again, what is justice in a country where this sort of criminality is a norm of most of the employers' psyche? A judge in Riyadh gave a verdict on the case on last Monday and awarded $670 damages to the maid but dropped all charges against her employers.
The female employer, it is reported, admitted the abuse and was originally sentenced to 35 lashes, had her sentence overturned. A Saudi judgment earlier had convicted Miyati for falsely accusing her employers and sentenced to 79 lashes. On his judgment the horrendous Bedouin judge in Riyadh on last Monday found the female employer not guilty, despite her earlier admission and 'compelling physical evidence' on Miyati's body, the human rights group says.
Another story of a Sri Lankan woman I remember vividly that again I read in BBC world news 3 / 4 years ago. 'After three months, I asked Madam for my salary and she started to beat me with iron bars and wooden sticks', the maid was explaining of her time in Saudi Arabia. 'Sometimes she would take a hot iron and burn me or heat up a knife and put it on my body'. Readers may see similar stories in
http://news. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/south_ asia/3204297. stmIn modern time numbers of migrant workers are innumerable. Nowhere had they got equal treatment as the local workers but little fairness must be there, at least that is what my experience in Europe over 3 decades. But Arabs' treatments to poor migrant workers are most horrendous and utterly inhuman. Indeed treating migrant workers such inhuman way is unique and unparallel as we hear of in cases from Saudi kingdom and other Arab countries. The case of Saudi Arabia, the land of Prophet of Islam and where the holy Kaaba is situated makes one ponder how come this people could be so cruel whereas Islam is said to be a religion of peace and its inherent power is supposed to be equality of mankind. Those Muslims who go to Mecca for religious purpose need to contemplate for a while if it is worth performing Hajj in a country that is inhabited by so many inhuman people and who is devoid of humanity in such a colossal scale among the people of the world. I need not mention that Saudi government is undemocratic, un-Islamic and one of the most barbarian one in the planet.
Tayeb Husain
Sweden
e-mail:
th12sw@yahoo. com 
