More on migrant labour action
I know I’ve been spending alot of time highlighting the recent migrant labour actions around the Gulf, but it is just so interesting. (See my previous posts: Migrant workers get organized, Labour news, and Getting organized?).
Right here in Bahrain the GDN reported that yesterday almost 1,000 labourers, employed by the Consolidated Contractors Company working on a Bapco project, protested and threatened to strike. They allege that one of their colleagues, Indian carpenter Mohammed Asghar Ali, was beaten in an attempt to coerce him to move to another work site in Qatar, in violation of his contract. Company officials denied beating him or using coercion. And there were of course the usual statements that we always here from officials in such cases:
“It’s just a small problem between us and the workers,” he said.
[...]
“As far as I’m concerned there was no reason for the demonstration at all.”
Somehow, it’s always just a “small problem”, and there’s never any “legitimate reason” for migrant workers to be unhappy.
Now, according to a thread on BahrainOnline, the workers protested again this morning in front of Bapco and refused to work. An eye witness claims that some 10,000 migrant workers gathered to protest, though that number seems a bit exaggerated to me.
Another commenter on the BOL thread writes that the reason why these workers are so opposed to moving to Qatar is related to the mysterious deaths in a Ras Laffan labour camp, which sparked violent protests there a couple days ago. (I mentioned the Ras Laffan protests as an update in a recent post). According to a Gulf Times article today, over 2,000 of the Ras Laffan workers were initially taken in to custody by the police after the protests, but around 1,500 were released yesterday. The labourers are working normally again after the company agreed in principle to change their housing location, according to the article.
The most interesting aspect is that the Ras Laffan workers were united in their protest despite belonging to various nationalities — not only from South Asia, but also some workers from the Middle East (one of the “mystery death” victims was Egyptian). And they seem to be aware of the strength that comes with unity. The Gulf Times article states:
According to them [the workers], the management, alarmed at the unity of the entire workforce irrespective of the nationality, has already split them into various camps.
At this stage, there is little evidence to prove that the Bapco protests are in any way related to the Ras Laffan protests in Qatar, as claimed by the BOL commenter. But certainly, it is more than coincidence that there have been so many strikes and protests by migrant workers in the UAE, Qatar and Bahrain in the space of just a few weeks.
Update (April 17): The GDN has a few more details today about yesterday’s protest and strike here.
Update (April 18): More details about the Bapco strike, which continued yesterday, are in the Bahrain Tribune and Al Wasat (Arabic) today. The strike is no longer about being forced to move to Qatar, but about demanding better pay, living conditions, food and medical services. The ministry of labour has threatened to take police action against the strikers because the strike is illegal under the labour laws. The strikers, numbering over 2,000 workers, are mostly from India along with others from Pakistan, the Philippines, Nepal and Bangladesh.
April 17th, 2006 at 1:06 am
I, for one, am for the workers standing up to injustice, as is the duty of every individual. Treating one’s fellow human unfairly, hurts one more than it hurts the oppressed. And I believe that sadly our countries are reaping what they have sown. bless you for bringing this to light…
(-_-)
April 18th, 2006 at 8:17 pm
Is there any way to figure out who the organizers are? And how to contact them?
April 26th, 2006 at 11:31 pm
I want to thank Jamie Etheridge, managing editor of the Kuwait Times for the following article about human trafficking in Kuwait published in the Christian Science Monitor and inform her, her article is being used in other venues as supporting evidence of the numerous human rights atrocities taking place in Kuwait.
I did a search of the Kuwait Times’ archives to see if this article was published there; I did not find it there; however, it was also published by CBS news and is available on other databases as well.
* Stranded Workers: For today’s story about illegal trafficking - and abuse - of workers in the Persian Gulf states, reporter Jamie Etheridge had no problem finding subjects to interview (page 13). “All I had to
do was call up the labor attache for the Philippine Embassy. He didn’t have to hunt them down. There are dozens in the hallways trying to get home at any given time. The same is true of the Pakistani and Indonesian embassies,” she says.
“The challenge is getting people to open up. If they’re still working, they worry that if they talk to you they’ll get fired,” she says.
How big is the problem? The Emir of Kuwait is allowing some governments to use his private aircraft to send home workers who have fled their local sponsors. “He’s flying back 200 to 300 women at a time. That’s
happened at least twice in the past year I’ve been in Kuwait,”
says Jamie, who is managing editor of the Kuwait Times.
Headline: Gulf region’s newest pipeline: human trafficking
Byline: Jamie Etheridge Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor
Date: 07/19/2005
(KUWAIT CITY)When Judy left her home on the southern coast of the
Philippines this spring, it was her first trip abroad and her first time on an airplane. She was excited, nervous, and sad all at once.
Like many young Filipina women before her, awaiting her in Kuwait was the promise of a good job and enough money to support her family and save for school. She was to become a nanny and tutor to a young boy.
But on her first day working for the Kuwaiti family for whom she had been hired by a recruiting office in Mindanao, Philippines, her excitement quickly turned to fear.
Her new ‘Mama’ - what Asian maids in the Gulf call their female
sponsors - told her, ” ‘I don’t like you, you are ugly,’ ” says Judy, who didn’t give her last name, in an interview at the Philippine labor attache’s office in Kuwait. “I didn’t understand what was going on. I just wanted to cry.”
Work began at 5 a.m. and ended at midnight. “I washed clothes, cleaned the floors, scrubbed toilets and sinks and bathrooms. And just kept doing that over and over again,” she says. “All this and no food, no rest.”
One day she waited until her sponsor was out, then packed a bag, and escaped to the Philippine Embassy joining hundreds of other Filipina women who have run away from their Kuwaiti employers to seek sanctuary at the Overseas’ Workers’ Administration at the embassy.
Unable to leave until her sponsor pays her back wages because she
cannot afford to buy a plane ticket home, Judy and the other women spend their days sitting in the embassy, unable to get another job and unable to go home.
Thousands of men, women, and children, most of them from Asia, will be trafficked to the Gulf this year to live as what the US State Department calls “modern day slaves.” Most won’t know until they get here what lies in store for them and hundreds will, like Judy, flee their employers, suffer physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse, and go home empty-handed.
The trafficking trap
In June the US State Department listed Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) among 14 countries that do little or nothing to stop human trafficking. Washington lowered all four to its
Tier 3 category, which could eventually lead to economic sanctions if these countries do not act to stem the flow of trafficking across their
borders.
The State Department says that 600,000 to 800,000 men, women, and
children worldwide are victims of trafficking - the recruitment,
transportation, or harboring of people by means of threat, force,
coercion, fraud, or deception for the purpose of exploitation and
forced labor.
There are no raw numbers on how many of these trafficked persons - who can end up being maids, factory workers, camel jockeys, or prostitutes - come to the Middle East. But the Gulf boasts one of the highest populations of expatriate labor forces in the world, with more than 10 million. In Kuwait, there is an average of one maid for every two Kuwaitis and in the UAE, 1.6 million people, or 80 percent of the total population, are expatriate workers.
Washington accuses the Arab Gulf states of failing to “comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and not making significant efforts to do so.” The US lambastes Kuwait and its neighbors for failing to “take significant steps to address trafficking, particularly efforts to prosecute trafficking crimes and protect victims.”
The thousands of Bangladeshi, Filipino, Indonesian, Sri Lankan, and other Asian women and men who seek sanctuary at their embassies across the region each week see little improvement in their conditions.
Earlier this year a Kuwaiti sponsor brought more than 1,000 Pakistani laborers under false pretenses. According to the Pakistani Embassy in Kuwait, the men paid the recruiter several thousand rupees only to arrive in Kuwait and find no job, no place to live, no work or residence visas, and no chance of earning back the money they spent to get here.
Recruiting scams are all too common. Trafficking victims say nationals from their home countries, as well as embassy officials and local citizens, often conspire to “recruit” hundreds of laborers, in exchange for a fee. Too often, such recruits find themselves homeless, jobless, and seeking sanctuary in their embassies or being arrested and deported.
‘Modern day slaves’
Marie, another young Filipina interviewed for this story, can barely hold back the tears as she tells her story. “I dreamed I wanted to go abroad to support my family … and when I came to Kuwait I thought my dream came true but when I reached my employer they were at first nice
but then they kicked me and hit me,” she says.
Like Judy, Marie eventually ran away. “I had a chance to escape and I went to the police station and an officer took me to the hospital.” With the help of Philippine counselors, she filed a case against her sponsor for mistreatment and a court awarded her 500 Kuwait dinars ($1,712). But she has yet to receive the money.
In neighboring Saudi Arabia, a nongovernmental human rights watchdog, the National Human Rights Association, says that it has received about 2,000 complaints of abuse since it was established last year.
The State Department, in its annual trafficking report, says, “Saudi Arabia is a destination for men and women from South and East Asia and East Africa trafficked for the purpose of labor exploitation, and for
children from Yemen, Afghanistan, and Africa trafficking for forced
begging.”
A spokesman for the Saudi Foreign Minister denounced the US report. “We are surprised by the contents of the report, and we disagree with most of what has been mentioned,” Prince Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud al-Kabeer told Reuters. “The rules and regulations of Saudi Arabia
prohibit exploitation and trafficking of people. Our religion also does not accept this,” he said.
The fight against trafficking
In the trafficking report, the US outlines specifically what measures it expects countries identified as the worst offenders to undertake in order to improve the situation. Speaking via videoconferencing at the
US Embassy in Kuwait on June 22, James Miller, senior adviser to the secretary of State and director of the Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, called on the government to combat its problems with “modern day slavery” by raising public awareness, improving labor laws to protect victims, and prosecuting offenders.
As most locals will acknowledge, the lifestyle of Gulfies (nationals from any of the Arab Gulf states) is built on a foundation of foreign labor. Most citizens’ households - including high-ranking government officials, human rights advocates, as well as labor activists - have at least one and often several servants including a driver, cook, and maid.
Some young women who are brought here to be trapped into domestic
servitude and often abused see no way out of their situation other than suicide. Instances of young Asian maids killing themselves by hanging or jumping off high buildings are a regular occurrence.
But for those able to escape, like 18-year-old Sittie Leng, there is
hope they’ll eventually return home.
Ms. Leng flips her long hair across her shoulders. “Household chores are not meant for me,” she says.
After signing a contract in Mindanao and arriving in Kuwait, she switched employers three times in four months. In the last house, she was made a babysitter and that suited her better. But after one month, she grew worried when she saw her employers beating the three maids.
“Shouting, hitting, beating, kicking, using the wood to hit. I was scared that maybe they would hit me next. The maids had black marks all over their bodies. Our employer is like a devil and that house is like a hell - a hell house.”
The four of them eventually fled together. Now Leng thinks only of
going home. “I want to study nursing,” she says.
When asked what she’ll tell other Filipinas who think of coming to the Gulf to work, she laughs and shakes her head: “Beware,” she says.
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:01 am
What is this “mysterious illness”? I think it’s great that these workers are protesting. More power to them! Sadly, they’ll be stopped because the govt doesn’t want this happening and I’m sure the MoL will step in to stop it. Why aren’t protests allowed here and why isn’t it allowed under the labour law? Just doesn’t make sense to me really. Are these ppl in a union? Or are there no unions for migrant workers?
May 4th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Tooners, the striking workers did eventually reach an agreement with the management it seems. Read this article.
Regarding unions, if I understand the situation correctly, migrant workers (except for maids) are allowed to join trade unions under the current labour laws. The problem however is that there are no laws that protect migrant workers from getting sacked because of union activities. For this and a few other reasons there are very very few migrant workers who belong to a union in Bahrian. Read the links in this post for a bit more. I’m also very unsure about what the labour laws say regarding the rights of migrant workers to strike or demonstrate legally.
On a related note, some Chinese workers in Kuwait held a protest this week. Read here.
May 6th, 2006 at 9:46 am
It always saddens me much, to read such stories from the Gulf countries! It is improper and unwise to trample on the right of workers and labourers no matter what. I understand, it is the miidle employment bureus who are mostly to blame for this.
I very much hope, the respective people in authority will sort this issue in a wise and humane way.
July 20th, 2006 at 9:34 am
One Worried Bahraini
March 31st, 2009 at 8:19 pm
ED can also be caused by emotional issues, like stress, anxiety, depression, and partner problems, all of which can affect the psychological aspect of gaining an erection. With generic sildenafil citrate tablets, you can overcome most of these issues and cure your impotence.
What are sildenafil citrate tablets? Sildenafil is the generic name for Viagra, one of the most effective oral erectile dysfunction medications. Sildenafil citrate tablets are vasodilators, oral medications which are used for treating male impotence .