Some stories of struggle are so dispiriting, so mismatched in power between attacker and victim, you can barely get through them. This one’s about widespread abuse of Sri Lankan maids in the Middle East:
More than a million Sri Lankans – roughly 1 in every 19 citizens – now work abroad, and nearly 600,000 are housemaids… In Saudi Arabia, the most common destination, they call Sri Lanka “the country of housemaids.”… 15 to 20 percent of the 100,000 Sri Lankan women who leave each year for the gulf return prematurely, face abuse or nonpayment of salary, or get drawn into illicit people trafficking schemes or prostitution… Hundreds of housemaids have become pregnant, often after rapes, producing children who, until Sri Lanka’s Constitution was recently amended, were stateless because their fathers were foreigners. More than 100 women come home dead each year…
Some of the more horrific stories:
The young scion of the Kuwait house where she worked had repeatedly tried to molest her, finally pushing her to the ground and breaking her wrist… Thangarasa Jeyanthi… had a face as purple and puffy as a plum, eyes swollen shut, burn marks on her body and dried blood still around her ears. The husband and wife she worked for had assaulted her daily… They had cut her with a knife, kicked and stomped on her, tied her hands with rope and denied her food…For Sri Lankan women, long hair is a source of pride, its absence, a source of shame. Ms. Manilariatne’s employer – her “mama” – had cut boy-short [her] hair…
And yet nobody wants to risk the remittances:
… the competition from other poor nations, notably the Philippines, which together send hundreds of thousands of women abroad each year. Too many demands for housemaids’ rights, the government fears, will simply prompt the gulf countries to seek housemaids elsewhere.
The women face cultural pitfalls:
They would even be taught that in the Muslim countries they were destined for, they should conceal that they were Buddhist or Hindu… they would learn how to dismantle a vacuum cleaner and say “toilet cleaner” in Arabic… how to turn on hot and cold water taps, how to run electrical appliances, how to navigate household hazards – the cleanser that could poison a child or the Clorox that could blind a maid.
And there are dangers at home as well:
Given the high incidence of fathers raping daughters with wives away, the housemaids were told not to entrust older girls to their fathers. An older lady was better, or even a home for girls… The trainees were warned not to send money to their husbands, lest they drink it away…
I’m a little skeptical of this claim given the powerful incest taboos in all cultures. You’d expect to see higher rates of prostitution first. Anyone have better info?
The village women emigrating have far less power than their employers. This kind of abuse is not unique to the Middle East, it’s also endemic to the U.S. and India. But the weaker state of women’s rights in countries like Saudi Arabia probably makes the situation worse.
The best solution would be for Sri Lanka to adopt economic reforms and create jobs at home so these women don’t have to emigrate in the first place.
Previous post here.
I’ve noticed on television that many of Iraq’s elite tend to be very light skinned and often look “white,” but the poorer people on the streets are quite dark and look more Arabic. Similar to how India’s affluent urban residents look quite different from poor laborers in the villages.
who says that being dark looks more “arabic.” in any case, i don’t think arabs are as extreme or explicit as south asians (though the north indian skin color terminology, if not origin, did arise during the mughal period when central and west asian muslims wanted to distinguish themselves from “black” converts). but that being said, lower class arabs will often be darker skinned because the reality was that slaves were generally imported from black africa, and to a lesser extent (but not trivial in southern iraq, especially and around basra) southern asia.
That is why you wont see New York Times posting articles about Hindu honor killings in Uttar Pradesh which might arguably be comparable in numbers to all the honor killings that happen in Pakistan.
Well, AM, the Indian media is pretty vigilant about such stuff. If it were as ubiquitous as you suggest, believe me there’s be a lot of media attention focused there. Honestly, any comparison of current Indian culture to current Arab culture is just bizarre and disingenuous.
Honestly, any comparison of current Indian culture to current Arab culture is just bizarre and disingenuous.
i tend to agree with you as far as facts go for a variety of reasons…but i don’t think the comparison is necessarily facile if you constrain your comparison to UP and bihar (and on some issues the punjab), for example. ie; sex-selective abortions and gender survival imbalances do suggest a “patriarchal” culture in northern india. the main reason that arab culture doesn’t tend to have the same problems is that polygyny is anthropologically strongly correlated with bride-price, so the birth of females can be monetized and recoupled (monogamous stratified societies tend to practice dowery because families have to comptete for high status males since they can’t take more than one wife).
of course, i think the difference (which you point to) is that northern india has a decent media and modern elite which acts as a watchdog and “witnesses” against these practices. the arab world (aside from top-down exceptions like, believe it or not, libya, or the absolute monarchy of morocco) doesn’t seem to express the same elite-disapproval.
Looks like Sri Lankan maids(mainly Tamils) get exploited by everyone. I have seen stories on Malayalam channels how Keralites lure these women with a promise of wedding to ditch them later.
You all realize that this happens in the US too, right? Admittedly probably on a different scale and generally different in degree, but it’s still horrifying.
I used to work for Andolan, which has a lot of members that were former domestic workers. Check out this excerpt from a NY Sun article linked from Andolan’s website:
IR, Pakistan is not the Arab world.
Forget Islam, differences between men and women, etc. A former resident of Kuwait, I can assure you that “mistresses” and non-Muslims there are equally complicit in maid abuse.
The point is that some third-world workers are severely abused but their families and governments expect them to work there for the cash. As long as there is money to be had, NOTHING will happen to rectify this situation.
Such maltreatment would never be meted out to US Citizens, not because there would be hell to pay, but because peninsular Arabs suck up to the white man. We need their oil/gas, they need our business.
When this back-scratching agreement is in place, we will not question the social policies of any Arabian country. As P.J. O’Rourke says, “Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.” Examples abound.
Again, as long as there is money to be had, NOTHING will happen to correct the real wrong.
Dear cicatrix: it can be hard, I know. I lived in the middle east for 21 years and was one of the lucky ones, but I did know what happened to many others there. We knew however well-off we were, we were all still second-class citizens. But I also know that many people took it in their stride because their main aim was to make money to send home.
I wonder why this incident was so shocking. If it happened in India or Pakistan or Sri Lanka, what would our reaction be? Would it be as active as this?
And if things were better at home, would they still need to go abroad as maids?
India and Sri Lanka will have to take Pakistan’s good example and just quit sending maids over there.
Maid abuse in the Gulf is awful. And I’m not one to support the racist societies of the Gulf.
But self-congratulations here is stupid. It’s not an arab problem. The rich Indians, Pakistanis, Brits, Frenchmen all have maids. My family, when we lived in the Gulf, had a Sri Lankan maid. We confiscated her passport. One night, she snuck into the bedroom, took it back, and (in the parlance of the Gulf) ‘escaped’. No, not on the underground railroad.
I’ve seen maid abuse in India and in Egypt — probably occurs everywhere men have power of women who have no options.
The problem in the Gulf is that there are no crusading leftist who champion for social justice. And the vulnerable live under the threat of deportation.
One would like these victims advocates to arise in the local population. But there’s no reason that they couldn’t come about among the middle class south asian population of the Gulf. Who writes the Gulf News and the Khaleej Times? Why don’t they do crusading journalism. Mohandas Gandhi was able to fight discrimination under more difficult circumstances in South Africa a hundred years ago.
This passport confiscation practice gives me the willies. Besides this Middle Eastern issue, lower-priced European hotels tend to do it instead of taking an impression of your credit card.
Thank you Ikram for saying succinctly what I’ve been trying to emphasise all along. Although, I don’t understand how those working for Khaleej, gulf news or the GDN can do anything if they’re under the threat of deportation.
Well the people in the big news papers use something called self-censorship. Having lived in the Gulf I can tell you that no journalist is stupid enough to write something that will show the city/country in a bad light. They will be fired and the editor will take out the negative bits from the story. Once in a while a story will pop up but there is not follow thru and there is certainly no investigative journalism there. Most of the newspapers just paste reuters and AP clippings together to form their papers. Not to mention the fact these are countries where if you convert to Islam while in jail you might be pardoned or your term will be shortened. Its a ridiculous system, they will do anything to push people to Islam all the while they go London on vacation and do the most unIslamic things. Forget London, anyone who has been in Bur Dubai past 9PM will see some very unIslamic things there on the street.
Aryan: I agree. I used to work for the Bahrain Tribune and the “news” is simply AP, Reuters stuff downloaded from the satellite with some words changed around, for example, not referring to palestinians as “terrorists”. The rest of it is all propaganda. I remember a few months ago when this human rights activist Al-Khawaja spoke out against the corruption of the Prime Minister of Bahrain at a forum, he was prompty arrested. The interesting though was for the next week, the front page of the GDN was all propaganda, i’m sure demanded by the Prime Minister. Article after article talking about how much he’d done for the country and appeals to “national unity” instead of fractitious questioning of the monarchy. But on the other hand, the same newspaper has a columnist, an English guy who regularly critiques the abuse of workers, Bahrainization policies in the labour force that leave expats jobless, and other such economic policies that are selfishly constructed to benefit the ruling minority in the country, to quieten dissent of the locals through false promises of reform and cash handouts e.t.c. The columnist does not outrightly challenge those behind many of these oppressions and the language is subtle and sometimes ass-kissing to make up for the critique so he’s able to get away with things. Since he’s a British citizen he’s immune to govt. action because his govt. would throw the biggest shitfit.
bb exactly. Same thing in Dubai, as long as you are White you are quite safe. If you are not White, well then you better have money otherwise the condequences aren’t pretty. The law is certainly not blind in those countries. In the end it is their own society that will suffer for it. As long as negative news isn’t published there won’t be any self improvement in thos socities. You can’t fix everything with money!! Once the oil runs out a lot of these countries are in trouble. Take the issue of why they need to import people to drive the taxis and be waiters etc!?!? It is a simple fact the Gulf Arabs consider it beneath them to do certain jobs, this includes being in the Army in many cases. A lot of the people in the police and the army are just Iranians, Pakistanis etc. What sort of person considers it beneath him to be a low ranking Pvt in his own army? You are protecting your own country but its beneath you b/c you dont want to take orders from someone from a different tribe. Well it really isnt their country in the first place is it? It is SAUDI ARABIA, Al Saud first, Arab second. These guys are headed for a disaster, I am telling you one thing, the grand children of the very same labourers will be a lot smarter and better off than the guys who lord over their maids right now.
ASR wrote:
These guys are headed for a disaster, I am telling you one thing, the grand children of the very same labourers will be a lot smarter and better off than the guys who lord over their maids right now
That’s the attitude I don’t like. We’ve all got stories. (A schoolmate of mine had her parents killed by a reckless 14 year old local with a new Mercedes.) But I don’t recall the Saudi Pakistan Association making a stink over ill-treatment. Or the overfed Dubai desis discussing the plight of the illiterate labourer at their evening parties at the Hilton.
BB is right that journalists can only do so much without getting fired themselves. But the rich could show some solidarity with poorer co-nationals. Short of changing government policy, you can at least change your own attitude. Or try paying your maid a little more per month than you spend for a meal at Le Meridien. Perhaps things have changed in the past decade, but in social conversation don’t recall the Desi oil executives, British government advisors, American defense contractors or anyone else making two peeps about labour conditions.
What I do recall is some rich desis treating poor ones like disgusting animals, and avoid them lest some of their stink stick.
Don’t get me wrong. The Gulf is a fabulous place. But to the extent there’s something rotten there, the stink sticks to all of us.
The fact is that people who have lived or do live there too can lose their job if they raise a fuss. I for one alway treated the servants very well, that is why some of them have been with my family longer than I have (they started work before I was born). Again it differs from person to person how they treat their helpers. The expats dont have any rights, it is the locals who do but they arent bother to raise a fuss about this. At most you can expect them to whine in the cafes about how the poor Palestinians are being treated thousands of miles away, while they kick their own foriegn helpers around.
It is inexcusable that people treat their servants like this. The fact is that poor treatment of any human being is bad enough, but poor treatment (rape etc) just b/c they are helpless and of different colour, religion etc is the worst sort of crime.
The Arabs do love white skin. They really fell for the Turks when they came accross them, they even hired the Turks to do the fighting for them, ofcourse a few decades down the line the Turks began to lord over Arabs and began to treat them like undermenschen much like the Arabs treated the people they conquered. There are some fundamental inbuilt flaws in the Gulf Arab socieites that aren’t the fault of the expats, at worst the expats pick it up and continue with it. This flaw will only build up till it leads to bad results down the line.
Ikram, whenever i bring it up in conversation I get yelled at or given those “It’s their choice, we can’t do anything about it” nonsense. The same classist crap where rich Indians go on and on about they worked hard and made it up in the world, so why can’t the other desis who make up the working and underclass do the same. On the other hand, i know of a factory where the owner is Indian and his workers are the highest paid in Bahrain compared to other factories. Their residences are also the most decent. However, they rarely get to go home often not seeing their families for years because of the shortage of desi workers now. Meaning, the govt is enforcing strict punitive measures on employers who don’t have a certain quota of Bahrainis and limit the number of visas employers get to bring workers from India. But the bahraini men that get hired are lazy youth who for the most part (not all of them) sit around doing nothing because they know they can get away with it. So in cold terms, productivity goes down and the rest of the crew that is indian and extremely hard-working get screwed because they lose more freedom when they are expected to compensate for the lazy half of the work team… My point was.. .yes, there are little things that privileged desis can do- higher income, human and decent living conditions but its not good enough….there needs to be a campaign that works from outside first to threaten the veracity of the “modern” image these Gulf states are desperately trying to cultivate.
Precisely bb. These states love to show themselves off as modern and enlightened when the truth is not quite that. The only way they will change is outside pressure exposes their skeletons b/c they themselves don’t see the need to first work hard for themselves, and secondly treat the hard working desis decently.
This will never happen IMO b/c as long as these guys have oil no one is going to irratate them too much. And the fact that I doubt too many people care about the poor labourers, it comes up and everyone says “how terrible” and then go on with their lives.
Ikram said, “But self-congratulations here is stupid. It’s not an arab problem. The rich Indians, Pakistanis, Brits, Frenchmen all have maids. My family, when we lived in the Gulf, had a Sri Lankan maid. We confiscated her passport. One night, she snuck into the bedroom, took it back, and (in the parlance of the Gulf) ‘escaped’. No, not on the underground railroad.”
May I ask why your family confiscated her passport? What is meant by “confiscated” – “stole”?
Why not ask the maids for a photo copy of their passports instead? Why is it neccessary to have the actual passport of the maid in hand?
I live in the UAE my neighbor had a Srilankan woman working for him since he is a pilot. This woman turned his house to a hoer house. One day I was up working on my laptop I heard a noise, I was surprised when I looked out my balcony to see police men when they saw me they asked me if I saw the maid. An hour later they of investigating they found 2 woman and a man who jumped to my villa and then jumped to the neighbor. I wont tell how horrified my neighbor (Indian) was when the police found them in her back yard.
In regard to the passport. Why take the maid passport .These maids run away to work on the streets. They get lured by the promise of a lot of money and because they are afraid from the police they find themselves working for these people and they cant run away from them.
UAE is a great place with great people , please remember a maid from the Philippines makes close to 13000 pesoses a month which is equivalent in her country to a chief police with more then 15 years of experince in addition to she do not pay for room furnished food clothing even her personal stuff soap shampoo Kleenex toilet paper etcÂ… I was told that the maid in Philippines get 800 pesoses which mean her stay in UAE is equivalent to about how many years little math will tell you that her 2 years in the UAE 13000 x24=312.000 /12= 26 26 years of her life .WOW you still wonder why they flock here. Let me tell it is the same reason why most Europeans, North Americans companies and people come here. We are all here because of that we can make more money have better life styles . Ask the people who lived here and went back home and are looking for a job.
Saudi Arabia has a pecking order. Among guest infidels, the non-Muslim menial servants are probably the lowliest, although in the late ’70s and early ’80s, the Yemenis were quite lowly as well. They used to be called “refrigerators with legs” because they were only employed in back-breaking work like moving heavy stuff.
Sally I have lived in the UAE as well. While all what you have said is true, the fact remains that the sort of packages that the sevants get is quite poor. They dont get too much time off and most of their money is used to support family back home. They need some entertainment time etc as well. In order to get some more money they are forced to do all sorts of things.
Case in point, I used to know someone who worked as a bar tender & waiter in a very good 5 star hotel. In the West that job is not the highest but it keeps you off the streets. A good bar tender will acctually make some decent money in London. This bar tender though had to whore herself to pay her bills. Why? Because the hotels dont pay much at all, they do that to keep their profit margins high and in order to keep their costs low so that European tourists can come and stay there. In the end this is just a little better than slavery.
These immigrants have no chance to lodge complaints, they have no or little rights (its all on paper but never in reality), they will never get citizenship b/c they are either not Arab or not Muslim. These states love to show themselves off as modern etc but there is much that is rotten under the gleaming tall buildings of Shiekh Zayed Road and Dubai Marina. Most workers are usually worked till they develop mental or physical problems, they are then shipped back to where they came from and new batch is bought in.
Hi there, Asr,I read what u wrote,However I like you to know that bar tender/waiter are provided with a place to live.
There a bus that will take them from there place of work to their resident paid for by the employer part of the contract. The employer has no choice he must provide resident or give cash equivalent(This is the law of the Land?)In addition he also provide them with breaks an hour for there Lunch they also must have a day of rest some opt. for a day and a half or two days. I have talked to alot of these people who work in stores or as maids. I have found them very happy if there are a few that is having hard time they should complain there are depatments to help them in the government. Again if they do not like working in the Gulf and they feel that they are not treating them fair simply do not apply to work there. I found it ridiculous that I pay a maid the amount she will earn in 26 years in 2 years. Provide her with a room with a washroom (ensuite)food and cloth her Cosmetics and Toileteries fridge, electriccattle, Tv . and since most go off for summer she ends up getting 2 month of summer free she get christmas week, Easter,and her birthday off.And all school vacations off. Tell me how is that abuse. Do not talk about the few talk about the few talk about the majority. I also talked to the maintaince (villa) people,they get tips which double there salary which is 1200 dhs in addition to accommodation. All the people I know treat the maids the same. Maids have their quarters here. I think the problem is most of the people who come to the Gulf never had maids in their homes and do not know the law of the land. So they hire illegal maids full or part time they will make stories to make you feel sorry for them this way they get paid extra people who had maids all their life will be able to tell based on their experince with maids when they are not telling all. I asked my maid a Philipina why do you lie? She said you can’t survive at home if you don’t lie to get out of trouble.(she lies all the time for no reason) I am trying to teach her to say I made a mistake I am sorry. If I learned that I will be an honest person and that will limit my chances of success.
LOl,What can you say to that? well I will keep trying I bought her some books to teach her the value of honesty.
People who work in these gulf contries are expats not immigrants meaning they are on contract when the contract is done they go home. They are not a citizen of the gulf contries. Now you can own a property or a business and stay in the country.
They have rules that we might not agree with however it protects their interest.
In the end I would like to say if they think it is so bad they should stay in their countries or try migrate to the west. However not everybody who comes to the gulf can qualify to migrate to the west, because they too have rules about who can live in their country.
Do gulf countries have any interest in improving the lives of their immigrants? I hope everyone doesn’t share your attitude. Pretty damn backward.
Yup them Hindoos sure love their electric cattle!
Moooooo…..
As mentioned above, it’s not only Sri Lankan domestics who can be abused in the Arab States (as well as Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan). There are Indians, Bangladeshis, Philippinos, Chinese, and others who endure indignities. And it’s true that an abusive employer can be a non-Arab (and that includes westerners). BUT most of the time the abuse is by Arab families who look down on “Hindis, Bakistanis, Philippinos.” Foreign maids can be assaulted physically or mentally. They are denied food, wages, or days off. They may not be even allowed to leave the house at all. The Embassies of these women shelter the ‘run aways’ who are stuck in a room since they don’t have the money or their passports to return to their countries (another reason why it’s unfair for employers to keep passports and why a maid will sneak out her travel docs. in the middle of the night). It’s usually up to the expats to take the initiative and volunteer to raise funds or provide free health care for cuts, bruises, & burns. If these women step outside the shelter, they are likely to be arrested on the employer’s orders for breaking their contract or accused of a fake charge like theft or poisoning the employers’ kids (I’m taking these examples from local newspaper reports). If the cops get hold of them, that’s not necessarily a good thing. The maids are held in jail pending deportation. They can be held indefinitely and subject to anything… The problem is that the Embassies and their Govts. don’t fully protect their citizens abroad. The Philippines and Sri Lankan Govts. have tried to ensure ‘paper’ protection for maids and labourers but it is not enforced. The Indians seem unwilling to stick their necks out and embitter diplomatic relations. SALLY May 22: You mention the prostitution incident. Yes, that is bad and that sort of betrayal of the employer also sucks. But living in the U.A.E. you must be aware that there are prostitution ‘centres’ in which maids are also forced into by their employers. It’s not always the maid’s voluntary choice or her desire to make a quick buck. SALLY July 16: “I found it ridiculous that I pay a maid the amount she will earn in 26 years in 2 years, Provide her with a room with a washroom … Tell me how that is abuse.” Why does it bother you that you’re paying your Philippina fair wages? Do you feel bad that you’ve missed a deal by not giving her what she would make in the 3rd World? Surely, you can make up for it through your tax free salary? Or if you’re lucky, perhaps your employer provides you with a maid’s allowance? In some Western States, it is the law to provide a bedroom with a bed. So don’t begrudge your worker, comrade (lol!). And I hope that you don’t excessively shout or even smack your worker when she does something ‘wrong.’ For that would be abuse.
I hope this is relevent. In the book, “Arabian Nightmare”, Richard Arnot says that it is standard practice for the employer to keep his employee’s passport. And Remember, Richard was a doctor and his pakistani employer took his passport as well, even though he was british.
Dear Mutiny, In this wicked system and amoung these lunatics that we had to live with, I can see that you are triying to say something, a good massege to all of us. You may blessed and have enough encourage to gain your purpose. God be with you
I have lived in the U.A.E for several years and I should say the treatment depends on how good their employer is.Some famillies treat the maids well,while the others very harshly.Besides the locals in the U.A.E and other arabs in general thinks they are superior to south asins because most of the south asian do odd jobs such as cleaning the bins,driving taxis and etc.Besides infront of us they sometimes make fun of the indian accsent because they think their acsent is superio to us. The other point is the laws in those countries treat people according to religion and race.For example the locals are given the highest prioroty and they have the right to do whatever they want and nobody(foreigner) could take actions against them.Then it is the other arab muslims such as joradnians,plastenians,syrians and other arab muslims who lives there given the second piority.then the next piority is given to the non-arab muslims.Then if you are a non arab and non muslim laws of these gulf countries doesnt protect you at all.I wonder when theses attidues will change?
Just two weeks back I met a Sw. professional Desi at a freind’s place, who had worked in the Mid-East. He said that they took his and his family members passport as soon as he started the job. I couldnt believe it.
The Dubai rulers wants to show to the world that it is a midernised state with pointless projects like palm island,Burj al-arab,40 story buildings and etc.So in a way they are developed in terms of buildings,well planed roads and such things but in terms of humanity,workers rights,democratic rights and more importantly religous tolerence and acceptence of other cultures Duabi,saudi and other gulf arab states are way behind.Rulers and Loclas in Dubai and other gulf states shouldnt forget that it is the south asians who have worked so hard (despite the shabby treatments they are receving at the hands of locals) to develop thier countries to the prest state.Thereor they must not deport forien workers in a flash for the sake of emiratisation,Bahrainization plocies.Besides the locals over there has no qualification(not all) and I wonder how they survive when all expat workers are asked to leave.
my fiancee left Philippines to work in Bahrain in October.She was in constant touch with me.After a week she said she was working for a Saudi,wife American,from Texas.She was alright. Then I had a phonecall saying that her employer had slapped her round the face for nothing. She said she would write to me but I have had no contact since November 15th.All my text messages went unanswered until 6th January when I received “Anna no longer works for us so this not her phone”. I am quite worried and have contacted Embassy and await further details. I don’t know which agency she used or her address in Bahrain.Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated.Thank you.
Hi ernest, I’ve just seen your post and I hope by now you know more about your fiancee’s whereabouts. IF you’re still waiting for news, I would suggest that you (or anyone who might be in a similar situation) try as many of the following suggestions that you can. The main thing is to use the internet to your full advantage by contacting people through e-mail and chat sessions. Philippinos abroad tend to be a very close community and look out for each other. There are probably Philippino discussion forums based in Bahrain. Give them Anna’s full name and details and ask them to spread the word among the Philippino and other communities. It shouldn’t be too hard to trace an Arab-American couple in Bahrain especially since the Arab employer is an expatriate. Try to have your story printed in the English newspaper e.g. a paragraph stating that Anna’s friends and family are trying to find her. The easiest way to do this is again to get your community’s help. Maybe someone will know a sympathetic reporter (who will probably be an expat and an Indian) who will be able to insert the story in the domestic section. Since you don’t have all the facts at this stage be careful about pointing fingers at the employers and getting hackles up. Do it discreetly by making it a ‘human interest’ story that happens to be conveniently timed with the approaching of Valentines Day e.g. the worried fiancee who has had no contact since November. I know that Valentines Day is not an official holiday in Bahrain, but the readers of the English newspapers probably can relate to it. Persist with the Embassy route. Even if you are ignored at first. Contact the Philippines Goverment in Manilla and your embassy/consulate in Bahrain. Contact the U.S. embassy in Bahrain even if you still don’t know the name of the woman that Anna was working for. The fact that a U.S. national is involved puts a responsibility on the U.S. plus the fact that the embassy will definitely be able to trace who she is among the Saudi-U.S. couples in Bahrain. If Anna’s employers have not been fair to Anna, the poor conduct of a citizen will be bad publicity for the U.S. embassy. Bahrain is a small place; embarassing news can spread easily there and abroad. Good luck 🙂
There are many reasons why women are treated like animals in arab countries, or in any country for that matter. One reason that seems most obvious and easily curable is how sexually repressed men are in most countries where there is a high rate of violence against women and children. I would debate that men who are not able to act as they wish in a society in terms of their sexuality will allow their emotions and desires to guide them rather than their brains. Constantly looking for sexual fulfillment in the most devious ways possible. They are stuck in a pubescent stage to say the least. In terms of the abuse of the south east asian women by the various Arabic employers, I would suggest that any group of people that pray to God five times a day, but yet treat fellow human beings in such a manner perhaps may need to take some of those occasions of prayer to see how the prayer verses match up with how one lives their life.
I suggest that we take down the facades and taboos of how women are supposed to behave and how men are supposed to behave. Keep laws in place to protect those who dont wish to be disturbed. If a woman wants to have multiple partners, and if a man doesnt want to be married, there sholdnt be any thing to prohibit them. Only sexual laws that should be is to prevent sexual predators, which would not really be a problem if men and women were allowed to live their own lives. In the end, this may help those who are religous to live a life more suitable and in line with the teachings of One’s God.
Obviously. there are too many men in power with pubescent mentalities and therefore too irrational to make any real logical system to curb attrocities against humanity.
anyone have any links to articles about this issue please post.
hey everybody,
I am sara , from syria. It is certainyl extremely sad here in the middle east how Helpers and migrant workers are being treated. Amusingly though, i assure you that families cannot survive without their support for a single hour. I just want to clarify on something. I have to say that it is not religiously inspired.i am in no way fighting for islam, if anything im born a muslim but i am agnostic right now. It is a social tradition and has abosultely nothing to do with religion. Infact if islam was practiced as it is you would be surpised how better the situation would be, in a relgion where a woman has the right to divorce her husband if he provides her no sexual satisfaction, i can hardly see how this misogynist attitude comes from.
a simple example. For political reasons ofcourse, you dont hear of this everyotherday. IN lebanon, syrian workers (amongst other migrant innocent workers running away from the hellish lives in their own natives countries to face even worse conditions) are treated exactly the same as srilankan women. Their homes (more like tents) burnt down, raped, abused, underpaid.
Sara
I come from Singapore, and most households here employ foreign maids. These maids are abused, under-nourished and even sometimes killed. They do not all belong to Muslim households. In fact, Muslim families are part of the minority in Singapore.
Thus it’s hard to blame Islam for this abuse. It’s the selfishness of the employer and his lack of compassion for someone less fortunate than himself.
If you look at the bigger picture, you’ll begin to notice that maid abuse is rampant everywhere (even in Hollywood) and not just in Islamic countries. It is a power-based and gender-based problem and has nothing to do with religion. gender-based problem and has nothing to do with religion.
I feel sad for those Sri Lankan ladies trapped in a barbaric country called Saudi Arabia – I don’t wish to sound racist but I have developed an instinctive dislike and hatred for people of Middle-Eastern descent, mostly Sheikhs from UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia – they like to make slaves out of anybody and everybody and are truely inhuman bastards. They don’t have any intellectual or scientific capability and are thriving only due to the money Petroleum brings. Once the whole world learns to live on fossil fuels, these Allah-suckers will be as redundant as the camels in the fucking desert.
Uh, newsflash people:
Other Arabs are second-class citizens in SA and the Gulf.
Don’t you people have any Pali, Egyptian, or Lebanese friends?
They essentially provide the higher education in some of these countries (Kuwait), and they are still treated like trash.
I don’t think that Islam has as much to do with it as some of you do, except that most Saudi men think they can probably just tell the morals gestapo that a maid was worshipping an idol, and that he was punishing her. Really, Salafist Muslims believe that they are the only true Muslims—they call the others “claimants.” They represent 5% of Islam, and they teach whatever they number to is the number of Muslims in the world today.
The only people who are treated well in Saudi Arabia ever are Americans and rich East Asians.
Hello who ever wnats to come saudi arabia as domestic helper better suicide.Because im working in riyadh in hotel im receiving so many maids with there sponser really they are ill treated. The last incident was Rizana Nazik awiting for beheadding for killing a babay actually she did not do that crime its a saudi style
please whoever try to send there beloved ones stop from now
You have to understand the source of the problem before dealing with it, shouldnt we ask ourselves the questions to begin with, like why are one in 19 women in srilanka going out of their country to work to begin with? the problem clearly is not only in the middle east oor any host country, and is rather to be dealt with in srilanka as a source.
as for those of you who are assuming that there is some racist ”arab” culture against srinlankans and anyworkers, you are absolutely wrong. you are doing precisely what those that hurt srilankans are doing, stereotyping.
The people who can afford to get a helper in their house (no matter how underpaid these helpers might be ) are filthy rich bastards that have been in worse situations themselves before. And the economic conditions of most of those countries are so bad that even LOCAL women are paid the same.
I am planning on finding a group of peoplethat are interested in the establishment of an organizationthat would try to protest if not protect the rights of forwign workers in those countries, and treat them as guests rather than abuse them.
The governments of India and Sri Lanka need to open up a branch to deal specifically with this very serious issue. Before anyone is allowed to leave India for work in the middle east, contact needs to be made between this branch and their new employer, a relationship established and a contract signed to ensure the safety of the foriegn employee. The branch needs to contact the employee as well as employer once a month to confirm that the contract is being honored. That passports never leave the possession of the employee should be one of the main requirements of the contract.
A Sri Lankan maid is currently being kept aagainst her wishes in Amman Jordan She has not been paid for 5 months and the employer is demanding huge sums of money from here before her passport is returned to her.
What can she do to get out of the country ? Who can she call (need specific phone numbers and addresses)
http://www.fromthesquare.org/?p=334
Same situation.
well ..when i came to kuwait i saw alot of ppl who respect their maids… and some maids killed children and parents … some maids got raped by the driver or any other guy in the street… and i was wondering .. kuwait streets are Empty 0.o all the ppl have cars… just ppl who isnt from the arabs / america and europe have a car ….
Considering how Tamil women in Sri Lanka are abused by Sinhalese brutes, I wouldn’t lose sleep at the thought of Sinhalese maids being abused by some Arabs.
I guess karma’s a b**ch.
I’m just going to go out, pump my car full with some gas from the Middle East, and go for a joyride.
^^^ Sorry, I was harsh, nobody deserves to go through what the maids go through. 🙁
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Please please in the name Lord Buddha, lets every one write to the President and put a ban on people going to these countries.
My hheart is crying for these enslaved ladies.