This news came just one day before the Guardian published a report about Lila, a Nepalese who was trafficked into slavery and committed suicide in Lebanon.

Originally posted on Ethiopian Suicides.

The article spoke of the story of Malagasy Abeline Baholiarisoa who spent 15 traumatic years of slave-like work under the Lebanese sponsorship system until she was able to go back home with 84 other women after her government chartered a plane to evacuate then early this year.

Abeline refers to her life in Lebanon as “a living hell” and described the eating and sleeping conditions and how they (in reference to herself and the other maid enslaved with her in the same house) did not even find the time to clean themselves.

Abeline, who agreed to come to Lebanon on the premises that (as the contract she signed dictated) she will be working as a nurse for a limited number of hours/day and for 800$/month for a 3 year contract found herself (like many others) instead working as a “maid” for 24 hours/ day and for less than 160/month. She used to pay her employer for the bits and pieces of food she ate.

The article also moved on to tackle “suicide” patterns and the constantly uninvestigated death cases. It then mentions stories of women who returned in coffins to Madagascar with missing organs. This was a very important eye opening report. If serious and tangible action on the ground is not going to be taken by government and people alike after this, I am not quite optimistic that any other time will inspire them to. If this does not move people enough, nothing else will.

When will Abelinea and other stop falling in those well-organized traps and when will we work on exposing the mafias behind this?

The article is very well written because it depicts the whole mentality behind the “owners” of this business by just stating facts and statements that they said. Read the full article in Arabic to get the full picture. Here is a quick wrap up of what has been mentioned in the piece.

- “The wage of a domestic worker does not exceed 125$/ month. Who would I pay 170$/ 4 days to train her?”

- “No this is not a business.. If I wanted to open a business, I would have opened a recruitment agencies for domestic workers.”

-Training includes teaching the worker how to perfect the coffee to the preferred taste of her employer.

- “Africans do not like Lebanese people.”

It is also good to know that the counter academy has its doors still open for interested employers.

The Arab Times reports here on a 39-year old Indian worker who has died. Her body was found in her sponsor’s house after -it is presumed- that she committed suicide. A case was filed- let us hope it is a little more hopeful than the tons of previous other cases filed time and again.

On the same note, it was reported that another Asian- nationality not specified- has died. One of his flatmates called the police to say he was found unconscious in the house. No cause of death has yet been identified.

Also in the Arab Times, a similair incident of a Sri Lankan maid’s attempted suicide is reported. She cut her wrist but the employer caught her bleeding and called the police before the situation became more tragic.

Yet another story relating to clorox. An Indian domestic worker has also died drinking clorox. It was reported that she “mistakenly” drank the substance and that thereby, this is not close in any way to be a planned suicide.

Also in Kuwait, a Filipina domestic worker testifies how her employer was going to “gauge out her eyes”. Angela had been subjected to systematic torture (beating with iron, food deprivation, broken nose, amongst other injuries) in the months she has served at her employer. She says she was treated as an animal throughout her employment term before she succeeded in escaping. Her employer forgot to lock the door that day. She is partially blind now.

Suicide amongst domestic workers in Kuwait is an extremely common tragedy. One only needs to scan through the various cases and endless reports to witness this outrageous pattern that remains unaddressed by the Kuwaiti government. It requires an immediate and cautious intervention or at this rate, it is possible that these statistics will haunt Kuwait’s history forever.

The road to serfdom: Maid trade ads distort the image of Kuwait by Mohamed Tawfik

Stop! You’re in the slave market! Public human trafficking prevails.

They’ve packed their luggage and traveled to the bright spot on the Persian Gulf from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Somalia, Ethiopia, Nepal, and India among others. The domestic workers in our Kuwaiti household include; servants, drivers, car washers, patient companions, house supervisors, and others.

They’ve comes from everywhere, ready to give whatever it takes in order to earn a living. It’s their mere right to work anywhere in the world, as long as they have a legal status. The universe has become a small village and the borders have been lifted in the era of open skies, thus the countries of the world have become open for everybody, no longer exclusive for its citizens only.

However, the firm-grip dominance of some humans over others has left nothing – not a single dream, or a narrow vent to breathe. The domestic workers in our country are daily being exposed to all forms of known misery. The lingering pain has become a routine for them, apparently. Although they live among us, their [way of living] is unlike ours – totally different; as they suffer a lot under deprivation, injustice, cruelty, servitude, oppression, let alone being sold in the slave markets.

At the same time when efforts to improve Kuwait’s image worldwide are increasing , trying to remove Kuwait from the black list of human right records, the domestic workers are mistreated and oppressed to the extent that some of them are being denied their basic salaries. No wonder that the suicide and escape attempt rates continue to rise, even after the implementation of the new labour law which limits the prevalence of injustices against the expatriates in general. The house maids are still trapped in misery at the hands of their sponsors, which force some of them to escape from the roofs of their sponsors’ houses.

Misery times

We’re not generalising here, as there are some other house maids who work in favourable conditions, and receive their full salaries. However, we should confess that the weak proceedings and loose laws can’t prevent the domestic workers from the injustice, severe oppression, abuse, deprivation of their rights, and other arbitrary practices by their unscrupulous sponsors. Some house maids don’t receive their basically low salaries for consecutive weeks, yet they fear to speak up, so as to avoid more oppression through a vicious unfair circle.

The poor maids are forced to ignore all their pain, in order to stay safe. They neglect their own rights, as long as they can keep their minimum subsistence from food and clothes. They imagine that they live in better conditions in comparison to their miserable home countries, regardless of how much they actually suffer. It’s quite known that some regimes ignore the human rights of its people who are living within its borders, let alone the expatriates living abroad.

Modern slavery

The patience of oneself to oppression, abuse, and injustice becomes bitterer when it’s associated with humiliation and liquidating the human being into a product to be traded in slave markets. It seems that we’re still living in the medieval ages. Instead of leaping forwards, we have been thrown centuries backwards. What we’re witnessing is a real human trafficking. It’s an age of modern slavery figuratively and literally, and if anyone is still grieving in shock, they can flip any local paper which seemingly belongs to the slave markets in the Mamluk Dynasty, not to the modern State of Kuwait at all! And here, I’ve assembled some of the slavery ads headlines:
• “A young maid and a decent driver are required for work.”
• “A Philippine maid to be transferred for the highest price.”
• “Ethiopian clever home maid; a house supervisor from A to Z.”
• “A skillful nurse to be transferred.”
• “We offer servants from all the Asian nationalities for competitive prices!”
• “A polite, clean, and obedient maid to be transferred.”
• “An obedient Indian servant to be transferred; He prays all the five prayers.”
• “An elegant and obedient maid from the Philippines is required, please!”
• “For the highest price – To be transferred: Beautiful Philippine, good chef, and babysitter: All-in-one!”
Usually the newspapers which include such ads raise a lot of questions, and lead to astonishment!

Human promotion

The list of ads is very long and unlimited; usually in the form of usury ads by sellers who are trying to attract the eyes of buyers, and lure them in every possible way. It looks like the buyer is promoting a product, and not a human who has rights.

There’s a question which pops into one’s mind when raising this dangerous issue, a humanly question in essence: How do those foreigner domestic workers perceive their sponsors? How do they see us? What do they say about us? And how does a human, who has been traded as a product, feels while hearing us, at the same time, uttering about living in the civilised age of the 21st century?!

Supervision needed!

What are the actions taken by the competent authorities in order to stop the slavery ads? How comes that the immoral ads are prohibited and at the same time the slavery ads, which violate the human dignity and display humans as products to be traded, are permitted?

What did the human right associations do about such ads in this critical timing which threatens our image worldwide? We don’t need to improve our image worldwide only, but before ourselves foremost. We need to instill the noble values in our young generations, in order to establish a civilised society which isn’t immersed in the medieval age practices.

Some human rights activists have raised questions about the supposed supervision on the ads which violate the human dignity, stressing on the importance of imposing regulations on the domestic worker transfer ads in newspapers.

Domestic Worker Law

It’s essential now more than even to bring the domestic workers under the labor law’s mantle, until issuing a separate Domestic Worker Law for this vulnerable groups. A new law has become a necessity to regulate the work of domestic workers, and prevent arbitrary practices, or trafficking.

Flesh profits

“I’ve been transferred for five consecutive times to different sponsors in a short period of time.” Said a sobbing Philippine maid to Al Qabas, indicating that the successive sponsors were trading her to make profits!

Required procedures for the preservation of human dignity:

There are a number of urgent steps that set a necessary action plan to protect the rights of the domestic workers in Kuwait:
1 – Forming a specialized committee to discuss and resolve the problems of domestic workers, and maids in specific, until the release of a separate Domestic Worker Law.
2 – Tightening sanctions against sponsors who violate, exploit, or physically harass their maids.
3 – Regulating the private offices and companies which import and recruit domestic workers, as well as regulating the whole process of importing maids, instead of leaving it totally random.
4 – Obligating the sponsors to transfer the maids’ monthly salaries to their bank accounts, and checking the procedures periodically.
5 – Prohibiting offensive ads in papers which are abusive to the human dignity.
6 – Raising the awareness of the maids regarding their own rights and advising employers and families about the rights of migrant workers.
7 – Coordinating between the competent authorities and human right associations in order to correctly monitor the situation of domestic workers and protect their rights.
8 – Blacklisting the sponsors or employers who violate or abuse their maids.

Conclusion

A couple of essential questions, especially after following the maid deal ads for a period of time: Can the sold maid decide whether to agree or refuse her new sponsor? And what if the first sponsor sold the maid to a new one who is barely known to her?

Dr. Hanieh, a lecturer in Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, described how the Saudi working class that has filled up most of the positions in the oil sector was gradually replaced with temporary workers in the 1960s and 1970s due to radicalization of the Saudi working class, which conducted several strikes, some of them against the control of a US firm (Aramco) over the Saudi oil. The strikes and protests were repressed and by the 1970s, 75% of the workers were Arab migrants. Those migrants, mostly Palestinians and Yemeni citizens were then themselves replaced in the 1980s and 1990s by South-Asian migrants who now constitute the majority of the workforce in the Gulf. Dr. Hanieh then goes on to discuss the living and working conditions of migrant workers in the Gulf today: passport confiscation, inability to strike, abuse and many occurrence of suicides.

Read here the full transcript of the interview.

The maid, a mother of-one, has attempted to resign at the beginning of 2011, giving her employers a one-month notice. However, her employers refused to let her leave after she has worked for them for three years, during which she was mentally abused and forced to work for 16 hours per day, seven days per week. After her employers wouldn’t let her quit, the maid escaped their home last month and fled to the Philippines Overseas Labour Off­­ice. Her employers responded by declaring her as an absconder at the Dubai Nat­uralisation and Resid­ency Depart­ment.

Yesterday, the 42-year-old woman was arrested and taken to the Dubai immigration prison and is set to be deported. Speaking to 7 Days she said “I tried to do everything the right way – I asked in writing to leave my employers after three years and they would not allow it. I had no choice. All I want to do is work hard for a good family. Now I have to go back with nothing. I can’t stand to tell my family in the Philippines, they rely on me for financial support.”

Foreign labor is regulated in the UAE under the Sponsorship (kafala) system, which ties the legal status of the migrant workers to their employer, making it illegal to leave their sponsors without the consent of the sponsor. Sponsors, however, are free to fire (and thus cause the deportation of) their workers whenever they please. Even in cases of abuse, if the worker leaves his sponsor without permission, he loses his legal status. The absconding charges result in a visa ban, meaning the worker will be forbidden from entering in the UAE again.