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Free Trade with Rapists and Labor Abusers

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Read this story from the Saudi Press:

Cases of Asian maids running away and leaving their employers in desperate situations seem to be a growing phenomenon. We tend to hear many cases of maids being abused by their employers but at the same time there are multiple cases of families themselves being abused and treated inappropriately by their maids.
Read that again. Trying to escape a bad employment situation is considered "abuse" by the Saudi elite.

Which is par for the course in a region where women workers, usually hired from overseas, routinely face rape and abuse at the hands of employers. See this Human Rights Watch report on Dubai:

Migrants, including large numbers of women employed as domestic servants, face intimidation and violence, including sexual assault, at the hands of employers, supervisors, sponsors and police and security forces. Children are especially vulnerable to labor and sexual exploitation and denial of basic rights.

Employers in Saudi Arabia also engage in routine abuse of employees, largely migrants from overseas. See this Human Rights Watch report:

The estimated 8.8 million largely South and Southeast Asian and Arab foreign workers in Saudi Arabia comprise a third of the country’s population, according to Minister of Labor Ghazi al-Gosaibi...Nongovernmental organizations in several Asian countries and those countries’ diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia documented hundreds of abuses of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia, such as unpaid wages, long working hours, and physical and sexual abuse. The isolation of women domestic workers in private homes, and the lack of legal protection, puts them at risk of serious abuse.
And yet this is the region where the US is pushing lots of "free trade" deals, the approval of the trade deal with Oman the most recent one, all part of a plan to build a "Middle East Free Trade Area" agreement.

We may be dependent on the region for oil, but why would we think of making trade agreements with regimes that are some of the worst violators of labor rights in the world?


6 Comments

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We tend to hear many cases of maids being abused by their employers but at the same time there are multiple cases of families themselves being abused and treated inappropriately by their maids.

Your Honor, that Asian maid forcibly imprisoned herself in my basement and made me put my penis in her mouth!

Am I the only one reminded of Desperate Housewives?

We may be dependent on the region for oil, but why would we think of making trade agreements with regimes that are some of the worst violators of labor rights in the world?

Human rights never seemed to matter much to advocates of free trade, whether on the left or right. Afterall its not like their kids or relatives are going to end up in sweatshop working 16 hours a day or beaten and raped because they work as a household servant in some ME hell hole.

IMO it boils down to the fact that a lot folks put money over people and country and the free trade types are the worst of the lot in this regard.

I guess this form of abuse is rather rare, as the formost form of abuse is to force maids to work very long hours, stiffle them on wage and apply physical punishment. Sexual harrasment, if any, comes extra -- meaning, no imprisoment in the basement.

There is not much we can do about it except complaining and shaming the respective countries (which should be done, using international fora etc.). More actionable is semi-slave treatment of imported labor in manufacturing, as we proudly practice in our Pacific possessions.

This has a vaguely familiar ring: Isn't something like this what was going on in the Marianas with their guest workers?

In addition to inhuman working conditions and terrible wages, the garment workers brought to Marianas were subjected to other fun stuff like beatings and forced abortions. cf http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_12_04.php#007200

and elsewhere on TPM.

The Bush Family loves the Saudi Royal Family, which certainly is the elite of the Saudi elite.  Abramoff represented sweatshop factory owners who routinely abused women.  This is the family values party?  Give them credit for consistency:  consistency in evil abuse of basic human rights.

OUTRAGEOUS

Mike

Bump

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