Writing in Arab News, this Saudi columnist is having a hard time finding any difference between the way many Saudis treat their domestic workers and the chattel slavery that reigned in the American South before the Civil War. And no, there’s no hyperbole here…
Cotton fields in Saudi Arabia
sjabarti@arabnews.comHomemade and homebred: Our cotton fields are no fig of fiction but real!
Take a peek with “thine own eyes”! There is a whole variety of them in each of our own vicinities! Or even better, meet those whose stubbed, scarred and scabbed fingers are the “proof of the cotton-picking pudding”!
Take Zakir and Bilal for example, who have come all the way from Bangladesh for the pleasure of cleaning our street cotton fields. So loyal they are, that they work round the clock (according to my honest-to-God 16-hour stake out – until sleep ran me over. When and where were they dropped off or picked up from? God knows).
So content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed etc., they are, that they can go months without their SR700 salaries (yes, I admit the sum most likely is exaggerated here) unneeded by their families back home who are also so content, healthy, fulfilled, well-fed, well-housed, well-clothed!
They are super beings (possible Superman descendants? Fictional fig or not!) feeding on scraps (so affordable even without the exaggerated SR700!) lest they outgrow their cotton field purple gowns costing us to inconveniently accommodate their grand bodies!
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April:15:2010 - 11:07
These types of abuses need to be reported to the Newspaper, the Ministry of Labor, the Human Rights Group here in KSA as well as the employee’s embassy for follow up. Perhaps the authorities are unaware. The sponsors should be held accountable for their actions.
April:15:2010 - 12:27
An aspect of the de facto slavery of many immigrant workers is the way that visas operate, with the “sponsor” having the authority to prevent the expat worker from leaving the country without his permission.
April:16:2010 - 04:48
I like how this piece was written.
“SR10 from diamond and Rolex cotton-field owners!” (TEN are you kidding me…try nothing! The money rarely trickles down where it is intended. Now if they weren’t a rolex owner I would say 5-10SR.)
“I’m sure you’re drooling with enthusiasm for a cotton-field position! Anyone can apply and qualify for cotton-field jobs and treatment except for Western nationalities, the Western-accented, and cotton-field owners from certain cotton-field families.” (You’d be surprised that there are a few western cotton field workers.)
Again and again I have wondered how people who partake in such abuses choose to be blinded. They need to be under a microscope for the world to see.
April:16:2010 - 07:46
Ah, this subject has many facets and degrees, and as usual the weak and defenceless come out worst. In some instances domestic staff are treated as slaves, and I prefer to think that this kind of abuse is limited to ignorant and uneducated employers, but I fear that is not always the case. On the other hand there are very many Saudi employers, in my experience, who treat their domestic employees with respect and even cherish them.
But as pointed out before, as long as other governments put up with the violation meted out to their nationals, at all levels, in the iniquitous requirement to essentially confiscate passports on arrival in the country, then this unpleasant attitude will continue. The United Nations should lobby to completely ban the concept of the Exit Visa, which is the embodiment of denial of freedom of travel.
April:17:2010 - 11:41
These types of abuses do get reported – all the time – and NOTHING is ever done about them. It goes on day after day after day. No big deal. A worker “expires,” in the hot sun? Or something? So what. Just import a few more. They are a dime a dozen. Slavery has been alive and well in The Sandbox for a long time. [If / when the oil ever dries up, THEN - and only THEN - it will be a much, much different story.]
April:24:2010 - 14:09
Well-written piece. Slavery makes a good metaphor, but serfdom is perhaps more applicable.
Saddest is that these people and their fellow countryman “volunteer”.
May:08:2010 - 10:47
Keith,
sure you are a westerner living in saudi arabia, so you mostly have contact with your own people who usually live in compounds, and the locals you know are of usually the elite of the saudi society who if they treat their workers well it is just to keep up appearances. i think it only takes a human to be humane, you should not be rich or well educated to grow a heart or fill an existing heart with mercy and love.
i dont mean that there are no good people there but they are minority.
the rest of your comment i agree with you.