Saudi slavery watch

[Bengal_Tiger]

Why dont these fat ass Saudis use maids from there own hellhole country, they bascially think of south asians / africans as their servants. I am glad India / Bangladesh are taking stand against these fat ass animals

India is, Bangladesh not really.

The government agreed on supplying 0.5 million female "maids" to the Saudis but Bangladeshi women themselves aren't interested in working for the Saudis.

Either way the times are changing and Saudis can no longer expect to have mass cheap house "maids" (slaves).

India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Bangladesh etc are all experiencing economic growth and civil rights lobbyists from their educated middle class won't accept their citizens being abused in this manner by these desert gypsies.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Saudi police try to shift blame onto Indian maid

Updated: October 17, 2015 13:41 IST | Suhasini Haidar

Police said she was “mentally disturbed,” but made no mention of her being tortured.

Questioning the version of the 55-year-old domestic employee from Vellore whose hand was severed in Saudi Arabia last week, the Riyadh police said her hand had been injured due to a fall and had to be amputated.

In a statement that sought to shift the blame, Riyadh police spokesman Fawaz Al-Maimaan said the maid, Kasthuri Munirathinam, was “mentally disturbed.” Significantly, the police statement made no mention of the allegations of brutality and torture against the employers that led to the maid’s desire to flee and said instead that “she was suffering from mental disturbances and therefore tried to flee the sponsor’s house.”

The statement is in contrast to Ms. Munirathinam’s contention that her hand had been chopped off by her employer while she was trying to escape their brutality.

According to Ms. Munirathinam, the family that employed her in June this year, had been abusive and tortured her. Unable to bear the treatment, she had attempted to leave their third floor apartment by climbing down a rope made from a sari through a window when she was accosted by the woman she worked for. “I pleaded with the lady not to harm me but she kicked me, punched me and cut off my arm,” she said in a taped interview available online.

MEA declines comment

The MEA declined to comment on the Saudi official’s version, saying it was making enquiries from the Indian Embassy in Riyadh. An official described it as an initial police report. “The final investigation report will now be awaited,” the official told The Hindu. The government had initially reacted strongly to the incident, with External Affairs Minister calling the “brutal chopping of a hand” “unacceptable,” as India demanded the “strictest punishment” for the employer. The muted response on Friday seems to indicate diplomats have been negotiating a settlement for Ms. Munirathinam, and officials say they would wait to see whether she wished to stay on in Saudi Arabia to contest the case, or return immediately.

The case of Ms. Munirathinam has outraged many around the world, as it has become a symbol in India of the condition of domestic workers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

As The Hindu had reported earlier this month, the MEA has taken a serious view of the fact that KSA remains the only one of 18 Gulf countries refusing to obey Indian guidelines for Foreign Employers (FEs), including a rule on giving bank guarantees to the Indian Embassy. As a result, Ms. Munirathinam’s story is also a test case for the government’s new resolve to hold the Saudi government accountable for the treatment of about 25 lakh Indian workers in the country.

The Riyadh police, who had, according to initial media reports, arrested the employers, now seem to have absolved them of all responsibility.

In the official statement, distributed by the Saudi Embassy in Delhi, police said the arm had been severed when Ms. Munirathinam “lost her balance and fell down, hitting the edge of an electricity generator located on the lower part of the house. This resulted in the severing of her arm on the scene itself.”

Rejecting all the allegations made by “media outlets” and rights groups, the spokesman also said that “all people in the kingdom are equal and enjoy all their rights guaranteed by the law based on the law of Sharia.”

http://m.thehindu.com/news/international/saudi-police-try-to-shift-blame-on-indian-maid/article7771306.ece

1,008 comments on Reddit so far.

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3p3jpo/saudi_police_try_to_shift_blame_onto_indian_maid/

Ottawa_man 127 points 18 hours ago

"Rejecting all the allegations made by “media outlets” and rights groups, the spokesman also said that “all people in the kingdom are equal and enjoy all their rights guaranteed by the law based on the law of Sharia.”

Yeah, right ..f*cking Saudi spokesman.

–]eu_or_aus 129 points 16 hours ago

In the Middle Eastern countries, the word of a native is automatically believed over a foreigner. Social status matters here too, for example they couldn't get away with doing this to a American/European from a powerful country. Otherwise you can bet your next pint that the English guy who got caught with home-brew in his trunk would have been sentenced to death straight away.

This maid, like countless other workers with no names and no voices is subhuman **** to them.

There doesn't need to be explicit "corruption" when your worldview is that she deserved to have her hand chopped off.

Priyon 19 points 15 hours ago

In Saudi Arabia, fault is with the one with less social status.
In Saudi Arabia, every non Saudi is considered to be one with less social status, if not outright 'inferior' and 'subhuman', especially all non Arabs (no matter from where).

[–]Neilsome 9 points 15 hours ago

Oh Man, I googled for the incident and whole bunch of other messed up saudi sh*t showed up. This on Youtube Warning: Don't see if you don't want your day ruined

[–]CockGobblin 15 points 14 hours ago*

Regarding Yemen: "They have different religious beliefs, f*ck them!! Kill Kill Kill!"
Regarding Woman/lower class people: "They're just humans, so what? They are everywhere."
Regarding Stampedes: "Were any royalty hurt? No? Thank God."
Regarding freedom of speech: "You said what on your blog?? Cut off his hands!"

asalrush 38 points 15 hours ago*

Saudi Arabian here, and I am not surprised. I don't know both sides to this story but I can see this happening specially the maid suffering from her employer, it is not something very common around me but here south asian workers basically have little rights and no proper channels to complain, and if they do complain to their embassies they might get justice but will then mean they will be out of a job.
My country has been getting a bad rep and I agree, and what makes it worse is when our bad rep is tied to the Islamic religion and giving it a bad image. In truth its our culture that is the cause of most our problems specially when you realize that the tribal aspect of our culture still exists hindering our cultural progress into the modern world.
However, I see a lot of young people from my generation who are trying hard to change this and I am optimistic about the future.

Edit: *South Asian workers

[Karachi]

^ Typical Saudi *******s.

[Bengal_Tiger]

^ Typical Saudi *******s.

Global social media coverage of this is slowly embarrassing the Saudis in to changing their ways.

Wahabis who support the Saudis will naturally want this to remain hidden and could care less if the suffering continues, but the Saudis are being, and will continue to be exposed and criticized by the world's social media users.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Saudi Shoura concerned over housemaids fleeing

Tribune Online Report

The Shoura Council members of Saudi Arabia have called for an investigation into the reasons why 86,000 housemaids ran away from their employers in one year alone.

They observed that it was a serious problem having adverse effects on the local economy and security as well, Arab News reported on Thursday.

Abdullah Al-Otaibi, vice-president of the health committee, suggested the formation of a special committee to study the recruitment file and find a solution.


Some claim that housemaids run away from their employers but a local community leader said that they escape because of non-payment of salaries, lack of food and maltreatment. Based in Hail, this community leader has been involved in helping housemaids after they run away from their employers.

In March, the Saudi Labour Ministry said they would publish a blacklist of employers and recruitment offices accused of abuses in dealing with domestic workers. The names would be published on Musaned, the government website about licensed recruitment offices.

The move is aimed at protecting rights of the housemaids and eliminating the malpractice by recruitment agencies and citizens alike.



Many Bangladeshi women returned home from Saudi Arabia after two to three months. They alleged that the employers had abused or tortured them severely and paid less than the contract money.

Saudi Arabia has absorbed the largest number – 2.63m workers between 1976 and 2008 – from Bangladesh.

Saudi Arabia resumed importing workers from Bangladesh on February 10 this year lifting a ban slapped in 2008. According to the agreement, Saudi Arabia will take 10,000 workers every month, initially only the female domestic workers.

KSA Labour Ministry under fire

The Shoura members also slammed the Ministry of Labour for its performance, including the implementation of the employment strategy endorsed by the Cabinet six years ago, Arab News website said.

Fadwa Abu Mureefah warned of malpractice in the recruitment file that goes against Saudi citizens. Mureefah also asked about the “delay in addressing the problem on recruitment and that why the Kingdom is still experiencing difficulties and obstacles on this issue.”

“Are there problems in activating the agreements signed by the Ministry of Labour to expand the number of countries exporting labour?” she said.

She also called for the generation of jobs with good salaries.

Mansour Al-Kredes called on the Labour Ministry to clarify its position on the matter and asked about the problems of unemployment. He added that it’s the ministry’s responsibility to control the labour market and address the problems that include unemployment among Saudi citizens.

Records show that the labour force in the Kingdom is 11,912,209-strong but of the number, only 47% are Saudis while 57% are foreigners.

- See more at: http://www.dhakatribune.com/banglade....4GzoVm8y.dpuf

[Bengal_Tiger]

The vanished: the Filipino domestic workers who disappear behind closed doors



Marilyn Restor left her family in the Philippines to work for a Saudi royal – and never returned. What happened to her and others who risk everything to work abroad?




Annie Kelly and Hazel Thompson
Saturday 24 October 2015 11.00 BST Last modified on Sunday 25 October 2015 20.32 GMT


Two years ago, Marilyn Porras Restor kissed her three children goodbye, wiped away their tears and told them she’d try to come home again soon. She left the family house, in a dusty neighbourhood in the city of General Santos in the Philippines, as she had done many times before. Only this time, she never came back.

Like hundreds of thousands of other families across the Philippines, Marilyn’s children had largely grown up without their parents. Raised by their aunt, they went to school, rode bikes and played football with their friends, while Marilyn and her husband Arnulfo cooked, cleaned and drove cars for other families thousands of miles away in Saudi Arabia, sending the money they earned back home.

There are now 53 million domestic workers worldwide – many of them migrant workers such as Marilyn, travelling from poor countries to richer ones to work in private households. In the Philippines, where 25% of the country lives under the poverty line and many families struggle to keep their children in school, the lure of a job abroad has pulled more than 10 million people out of their homes and scattered them across the world, many in Gulf nations. Official remittances sent back to the Philippines by overseas workers now top $26bn, or nearly 15% of the country’s GDP.

Once or twice a week, without fail, the Restor children would gather around a laptop as Marilyn’s pixelated face appeared on Skype, scolding them about their homework and listening to their test results and friendship woes. Then, one day, without warning, the calls stopped.

The family’s desperate search for Marilyn ended in a morgue in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, over a year later. Arnulfo, who was working in Saudi as a driver for a different wealthy family, received a phone call asking him to come and identify a body. The Marilyn he had known was robust and strong. When he pulled back the sheet, he found little more than skin and bones.

A week later, in the corner of their small living room, Marilyn’s two daughters, Ana, 18, and Lunycar, 12, are sobbing, their bodies bent around their grandmother, Nani. The house is heavy with their grief. When he tries to talk about his mother, Marilyn’s son John struggles to get his words out. “She was a good mother… She was strict, but she loved us.”



Marilyn Restor's family Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Marilyn Restor’s children Ana (far left), John (fourth from left) and Lunycar (far right).


John is 21, but his despair makes him look like the young boy Marilyn had to leave behind 12 years earlier, when she first went to work in Saudi. He stops and angrily brushes tears away with the back of his hand. He wishes he had worked harder at school and made her proud. “I just want to tell her that I miss her, even if I was a stubborn son before. I miss her so much.”

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For over a decade, Marilyn had a good job with a member of the royal family in Riyadh. She was respected, and the money she sent home put John and his sisters through school and college, and paid her mother’s hospital bills. Then, last June, she went missing from her employer’s house. Her husband was told she had been kidnapped and forced to work for another faction of the royal family. Arnulfo says he got the address of the house and went to find her, but was shot at by armed guards. Nobody in the Philippine embassy or the Saudi police would help them. The family who took Marilyn became the subject of a formal complaint from the Philippine government to the Saudi authorities, alleging abuse and imprisonment of a number of domestic workers, and asking for information about another three missing women linked to the same address.

Back in the Philippines, Marilyn’s family were frantic. They trailed around government departments asking for help, but got nowhere. “We believe our government could have rescued her at any time,” says Marilyn’s sister Lani. They circulated the address where they believed Marilyn was being held as widely as they could. “We would go and visit officials [in different government departments] to try and get help. We were begging them. We were so pitiful.”

The family heard nothing from Marilyn for nearly 12 months, except for one brief phone call last October, when she managed to speak to John for a few minutes. “She said she was OK and that I love you, please don’t worry about me,” says John. “We thought she was going to be all right.”

In Saudi, Arnulfo is involved in an ongoing attempt to get Marilyn’s body brought home. The family who took her have offered them money, but Arnulfo and his children want answers: they want to know how and why she died. Arnulfo was told by an official at the Philippine embassy in Riyadh that she had probably been pushed off a roof.



“Her children just want her home,” Lani says. On the couch, John and his sisters are staring blankly at their phones. Lani says the worst thing for all of them is wondering what Marilyn went through in those final months. “We just want her back, but it’s too late.”

***

According to the United Nation’s International Labour Organisation, domestic workers are some of the most likely to face abuse and exploitation in their place of work. A number of cases in the past few weeks have made international headlines: an Indian domestic worker who had her arm chopped off, allegedly by her employer when she asked for her wages; a Saudi diplomat who reportedly tortured and raped his Nepalese domestic workers; another Saudi man videoed apparently molesting his foreign maid as she worked in the family kitchen. But these are just the stories we hear about; there are many more cases, documented by human rights groups, in which women have been gang-raped, burned with oil, starved, mutilated with acid or literally worked to death.

In the Gulf, the International Trade Union Confederation says that 2.4 million domestic workers are facing conditions of slavery. Yet moving abroad to find work as a domestic worker is a calculated risk that millions of women such as Marilyn take every year.

For a largely invisible workforce, domestic workers wield serious economic clout. Collectively, they account for 4% of total global employment and nearly 8% of total female employment. There are 1.5 million domestic workers in Saudi Arabia alone, and recruitment agencies fly in 40,000 women a month to keep up with demand. Muslim women from the Philippines are considered the highest calibre of workers in many richer households.

I was so tired it felt like I couldn’t control my brain. I felt so alone
Many of those who travel abroad have positive experiences – they get lucky, find a good recruitment agency, get placed in a decent family and are paid properly. Yet when things go wrong, it becomes clear what a terrible gamble these workers, many of them women, are taking with their lives.

In the Philippines, there are an increasing number of cases such as Marilyn’s. Some women simply vanish; others turn out to be “mysterious deaths”, their bodies coming back mutilated or with signs of poisoning or stab wounds, recorded as suicides or heart attacks.

“They would like you to believe that these women are always hanging themselves or throwing themselves off high buildings,” says Laorence Castillo, a caseworker at Migrante International, a small Filipino NGO that helps domestic workers and their families. When women die or go missing, there is rarely an investigation, he says. “Everyone is happy to let these women go abroad and keep the economy going, but aren’t happy to fight for them when things go wrong.”

After exhausting every official avenue of help, many families end up in Migrante’s cramped office on the outskirts of Manila. “We’re their last hope,” Castillo says. “They pray we can work miracles, but we can’t.” On his desk is a pile of lever arch files, each one a woman who has failed to come home. He says the powerlessness of being unable to help your loved ones sends people mad. “These families are beating their fists and screaming at closed doors.”




Marilyn Restor’s mother Nani and sister Lani.

A small organisation staffed by volunteers and perpetually teetering on the edge of financial collapse, Migrante receives around 12 distress calls a day from women across the Middle East. It has handled 14 mysterious death cases in three years, including that of Terril Atienza.



In 2011, the family of the 34-year-old domestic worker was told she had committed suicide a week before she was due to arrive home. Terril had gone abroad without a proper visa and had been sent by her agency to Singapore. When she complained about conditions, she was sent on to work for a household in Mongolia. Four months later, her family was informed she had committed suicide. Her daughter Nyrriel, the eldest of four siblings, says she didn’t believe it was true. “Our mother had gone away to provide for us, to put us through school,” Nyrriel says. She says her mother had complained about being mistreated and having her wages withheld. “She was protecting us from what she was going through over there, and she was still protecting us until her very last breath.”

When Terril’s body arrived back in the Philippines, her children say they found it covered in wounds and burns, with two large bruises around each wrist. An independent autopsy found that her heart was missing and that her body had been stuffed with rags. The family was destroyed by her death and two years on are still struggling, both financially and emotionally.

“No 16-year-old should have to grow up as fast as I did,” Nyrriel says. “My father and I have had to look after my three younger siblings. Life was terrible – we had to cope with her death, and we had to take care of the case. Everybody was crumbling. That first month [after she died], no words can describe the pain. Two years on we still have no justice. Nobody has helped us – it’s as if my mother didn’t exist.” She is furious now, her voice catching. “But we exist. Our lives mean something.”

It’s startling what cruelty can emerge when one person has control over another

Rothna Begum of Human Rights Watch says that “in many houses these women have absolutely no status – they have been bought”. The many Filipino women who go to the oil-rich countries of the Gulf work under the kafala sponsorship system, which legally ties migrant workers to their employers. To get a work visa, these women are sponsored by families, and are then not permitted to leave their jobs or the country without their employer’s permission. If they run away, they become “absconding workers” and can be fined or thrown in jail. There is also little they can do if their employers decide not pay them. The International Domestic Workers Federation estimates that families save $8bn (£5.1bn) a year by withholding wages from their domestic workers.

“With kafala and other legal systems around the world that give no labour rights to migrant women, you are giving almost total impunity to employers to treat these women however they like,” Begum says. Her work has taught her not only about people’s capacity for survival, she says, but also about the darkness of the human soul. “It’s startling what cruelty can emerge when one person has complete control over another.”

The Philippine government is considered one of the most progressive and proactive when it comes to fighting for justice for overseas domestic workers. It demands the highest minimum wage, of $400 a month, for its domestic workers abroad. “So if you think of the situation for women in the Philippines is bad,” Begum says, “it’s much worse for those travelling from places like Sierra Leone, Kenya or Bangladesh.”

When Begum first started working on domestic worker rights, her team received a package from a recruitment agency in Sri Lanka with the profiles of 45 women who had disappeared after being placed in employment in countries across the Gulf and then sold from family to family. “We didn’t know what to do to help them,” she says. “At least the Philippines’ embassies provide shelter for women who are trying to escape exploitation and abuse. These other women are absolutely on their own.”



Photograph of Joseph Sarno and his wife Marina Facebook Twitter Pinterest
Joseph Sarno went for months without news of his wife Marina.

According to Charles Jose, spokesperson for the Filipino department of foreign affairs, the government provided assistance to 20,939 overseas workers and their families in 2014. “The Philippine embassies concerned are extending all necessary and appropriate consular and legal assistance to these overseas foreign workers,” he says. However, the reality is that the inequality between migrant worker and employer is often mirrored by the relationship between poorer labour-sending countries and rich and powerful “host” governments. When things go wrong, those governments that rely on the remittances sent back by migrant workers can be slow to demand justice.



We navigate the haze and blazing horns of Manila’s rush hour to meet Marina Sarno, a small and gracious woman in her early 40s. Her face breaks into a wide smile when we ask how she is. She’s just pleased to be alive, she says. However hard her life is now, in the Philippines nothing will never compare with what she experienced abroad.

Marina had already had one job as a domestic worker in Saudi Arabia when she decided to go abroad again. “When I told my husband, he said I shouldn’t do it, but what choice did we have?” Marina shrugs. The couple had tried to support their four children, working in the Philippines as a midwife and taxi driver, but they couldn’t make ends meet.

This time, Marina’s recruitment agency sent her to the UAE. As soon as she arrived at her new employer’s house, she knew she was in trouble. Her passport and phone were taken away and she wasn’t allowed to contact her family. “My employer was like a lion with no mercy,” she says.

Marina says she was forced to work 22 hours a day without rest. She woke at 4am to start cleaning the family’s fleet of cars and worked through to 2am the following morning. “I had no time off, no time to rest ever. Even when I was trying to eat, she would be calling me: ‘You are not here to rest. I paid a lot of money for you.’ To her, I was a slave. I was not a human.”

After a month of working constantly on two hours sleep and little food, Marina’s health was deteriorating fast. She lost sensation in the right half of her body and couldn’t use her hands. “I was so tired it felt like I couldn’t control my brain. After a few weeks I was in so much pain, I couldn’t walk or lift anything. I didn’t know if my children were OK. I felt so alone.”

But if Marina left, under the UAE’s kafala system, she would become an absconding worker. Marina told her agency that she was being mistreated, but they said she had to stay until the end of her contract. “They said, ‘Your madam has paid good money for you.’ This is when I knew my agency wouldn’t help me.”

My employer was like a lion with no mercy. To her I was a slave. I was not a human
Back in the Philippines, Joseph was frantic with worry. “My children were always asking, ‘What is the news? Where is Mama?’ I didn’t know what to say.” He hadn’t heard from his wife in months, she had sent money back only once and her phone wasn’t working. “I felt sick all the time, because I didn’t know what had happened to her.”

After failing to get any help from her agency or government departments, Migrante International helped Joseph file a repatriation request. When Marina’s employer found out, she was enraged. “She said, ‘You can’t go back to the Philippines because I paid money for you,’” Marina says. She claims her employer threatened to get her sent to jail, or kill her, and screamed that she would dump her in the desert. “She told me, ‘If I killed you, nobody would care and nobody would find you.’ I said, ‘Madam, if you want to kill me, go ahead.’”

After this, Marina says, her boss tried to poison her. The husband of the house then threatened to beat her with a baton, and locked her in a prayer room for three days and nights with no food or water. The room was boiling hot and she drank water from the toilet. Marina’s lips peeled away and her skin became loose. She felt pain all over her body. When the family went out, she managed to climb out of a window into the kitchen, where she wrote an SOS on a piece of paper. To get the note over the wall of her employer’s compound, she made a hole in a potato and threw it over, where it was found by an Indonesian domestic worker. The note was passed to Migrante, which went to the Philippine embassy and Marina’s agency, and she was rescued. But even then, Marina says, the agency tried to make her sign a form promising she wouldn’t sue them or her employer.



Now that she’s back home, Marina is trying to put her life back together. With the help of Migrante International, she has just received compensation from her former employer, but is now Joseph’s full-time carer after a stroke left him paralysed. The couple believe it was brought on by the stress of Marina’s disappearance.

She says that she would now rather face poverty at home than risk life as a domestic worker again. “I would just say to anyone who is thinking of going to work abroad, don’t trust anyone,” she says. “They will kill you and nobody will do anything to help.”

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/24/the-vanished-filipino-domestic-workers-working-abroad

[Bengal_Tiger]

Saudi may impose taxes, open country to human rights organisations


#SaudiStruggle
After coup rumours and concerns over the country's economy and human rights record, Saudi officials share new strategic vision with UK newspaper

Saudi Arabia's King Salman bin Abdulaziz chairs a meeting in Riyadh this week (AFP)



Thursday 12 November 2015 09:50 UTC
Last update: Thursday 12 November 2015 15:50 UTC

Saudi Arabia plans to cut spending in the country, potentially borrowing money and imposing taxes for the first time, according to a detailed programme sent to the Telegraph by King Salman and his advisers.

The statement also suggests that the kingdom will open its doors to international human rights organisations and acknowledges that the issue of women's rights has been mismanaged.

"The Saudi women issue has become a global issue of public opinion and it seems that we have lost a lot in this case [in terms of public opinion]," the programme reportedly says. "[But this] was fair because we did not improve the way we managed the issue."

The statement comes after the Saudi leadership - with coup rumours, a Hajj disaster and economic concerns - has been under increasing pressure in recent months domestically and internationally.

In September, MEE revealed that a senior member of the Saudi royal family had circulated a letter among princes expressing fear that the monarchy could collapse unless the king was urgently replaced.

Low oil prices have also sparked concerns that the country's growing budget deficit could rapidly erode its reserves unless drastic action is taken.

The kingdom has also come under scrutiny following the crushing of pilgrims at the Hajj on 24 September. Saudi officials originally reported that 769 people died in the incident, but an MEE investigation found that the death toll was at least 2,432.



The case of 17-year-old Ali al-Nimr, who has been sentenced to death by beheading and crucifixion for his involvement in Arab Spring-inspired protests in eastern Saudi Arabia in 2012, has also drawn international criticism, and is thought to have led to the UK dropping a multi-million dollar prison consultancy contract with the country.

Days after the contract was cancelled, the Saudi ambassador to the UK, Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz, wrote a column, also published in the Telegraph, that said Saudi would not "be lectured".

"If the extensive trade links between the two countries are going to be subordinate to certain political ideologies, then this vital commercial exchange is going to be at risk," he wrote. "We want this relationship to continue but we will not be lectured to by anyone. Hasty decisions prompted by short-term gains often do more harm than good in the longer term."

The excerpts from the programme, published in the Telegraph on Thursday and apparently prepared by members of the royal court and the country's economic council, appear to take a much softer tone than Abdulaziz's letter.

It acknowledges that with 80 to 85 percent of Saudi's income reliant on oil revenues, the drop in the price of oil has caused them to think about borrowing money or potentially taxing citizens for the first time.

With more than 30 percent of the budget identified in the programme as waste, the officials appear to indicate that they plan to cut subsidies, increase spending on infrastructure and diversify income sources, including partnering with the UK, US and France potentially in the technology field.

Bill Law, a Gulf analyst and MEE columnist, said that defence minister and deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman - regarded as one of the most powerful figures in government - will have to navigate cautiously in weaning off Saudis from subsidies.

"The weakened economy is hurting ordinary people too and a quick and brutal subsidies slash would serve to fuel discontent," Law said.

On the issue of women's rights in the country, the programme, as reported by the Telegraph, says the country should have been more open to reforms, but was held back by "heritage and popular tradition". It was not clear whether any specific changes for Saudi women were detailed in the document.

"We have come a long way and cannot just underestimate efforts made in the last few years in enhancing the role of women in society and give them the rights they deserve," it reportedly says.

However, Law is not holding his breath that there will be drastic improvements regarding Saudi's rights track record.

"That is mood music for western allies but I doubt very much that there will be any shift in Saudi Arabia's atrocious rights record," he said. "Women will [only] see modest gains."

The officials stand by the sentence passed down to Ali al-Nimr and his uncle, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, who has also been sentenced to death by beheading.

"The al-Nimr family members pursued violence and attacks on security forces and government facilities beside terrorising civilians, hooliganism and vandalism," the statement reportedly says. "It is a clear criminal act that led to murders of police officers ... We have a right to maintain safety and security of our citizens and we cannot understand the demands to make it go unpunished."

- See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/sa....6RdaDTKk.dpuf



*No mention of improving the rights of expatriate workers in Saudi, mainly from Asian and African countries, who are murdered, tortured, raped and abused in this Wahabi state.



A female maid in Saudi Arabia, a victim of abuse in the Wahabi state.

Saudi Arabia's "reform" promises contained no reference to ending the slavery system in Saudi and the rampant abuse of foreign slaves by Saudis.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Video: Saudi Woman Tortures Moroccan Maid, Holds Her Captive

Saturday 28 November 2015 - 10:18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=3_dhCtENBts

Rabat – “She forces me to stay, she tortures me.” the woman says, claiming her Saudi employer took her money and does not allow her to leave the house.

“The Saudi woman tells me I will never leave. I warned her that I will call the police. She says: ‘I don’t care do what suits you, I am just not letting you go away’.”

The maid, who says the Saudi’s woman husband live in Morocco with his second wife, claims he told her she would be free to go if she pays him money to let her go.

“I gave the money to her husband. His name is Mounir Mohammed Arab, and he lives with second wife in Morocco. He wrote in a paper that once he will take the money, he will send me back to Morocco, but he took the money and left me here.”

The Moroccan maid says the Saudi woman is refusing to let her go back to her country and wants her to work for her for free.

“Despite paying him back, I am still under house arrest having to deal with torture and abuse.

“She keeps telling me you will stay here and work for free and you will leave when I decide so,” the Moroccan woman says while in a state of despair.

She says that the residential area where she leaves makes it harder for to flee and put an end to her ordeal.

“There is no way for me to go to the police and denounce her. She knows that and that’s why she threatened me.”

“She keeps torturing me, and the contract I have with her is a fraud, she is not the one who signed it, it is signed by her friend, a woman called Soumaya, who lives in Jeddah.”

http://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2015/11/173792/video-saudi-woman-tortures-moroccan-maid-holds-her-captive/

“There is no way for me to go to the police and denounce her.

Police will always support a Saudi over a non-Saudi even if the Saudi tortured, raped or murdered, that's why.



Here is a response from a reader of the website on this:

Dean Chelqui · Henry Compton School

Gulf states don't have any laws to protect foreign workers. I've said this time and time again. People do not go there.you wouldn't go into a room full psychotic murders then why would go that rancid country like Saudi Arabia. The Philippines have stopped sending people there because of the horrific way they have treated and some cases come back dead.and we should not let Saudis enter Morocco even if they are wealthy. That country needs to be civilised,the Romans didn't bother the Ottomans tried the only thing left is to bomb it to smithereens.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Indian men 'savagely beaten with stick by Saudi boss' to be flown home to safety

14:24, 24 DEC 2015 UPDATED 15:14, 24 DEC 2015
BY SIOBHAN MCFADYEN

WARNING GRAPHIC FOOTAGE: The Indian government intervened after one of the men filmed the incident on their mobile phone and sent it to relatives





Three Indian men are to be flown home after claims they were badly beaten by their brutal employer in Saudi Arabia.

The Indian government intervened after one of the men filmed the alleged incident on their mobile phone and sent it to relatives who informed the police.




Extremely graphic footage appears to show the unnamed employer, wearing a thwab and keffiyeh, battering the men with a wooden stick.

Concerned by the savagery of the beating, the men's families immediately contacted authorities to demand they are returned to their home on the Kerala Malabar Coast.


Shocking video shows Saudi employer brutally beating three Indian workers

Beating: The shocking video prompted the men's families to contact Indian authorities

Three young men are said to have been physically tortured by the rogue employer and will now be allowed to return home, according to External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj.

The minister stated that Indian diplomats contacted the Saudi police on behalf of the victims' families and arranged for the young men to have protection.

She tweeted: “We reported this to Saudi Police . We are in touch with Indian workers. They will be back in India within a week”.


The three youths who are believed to have come from Haripad in Kerala’s Alappuzha district emigrated to Saudi for work.

One of the men is believed to have used WhatsApp to send the video of their boss beating them with a wooden plank.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/indian-men-savagely-beaten-stick-7067613

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lBrSYJ22q0

These Luffy a.k.a "History of Pashtuns", Shamlawar Khurasani style Saudi thugs are a real shame and Saudis and Arabs in general should seek to educate their people.

[Bengal_Tiger]

Uganda bans housemaids from working in Saudi


Uganda bans housemaids from working in Saudi



The Ugandan government has banned its citizens from taking jobs as domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, claiming they are often abused by their employers.

Wilson Muruli Mukasa, minister of gender, labour and social development, said on Friday that the government continued “to receive information of our people being subjected to inhumane treatment at the hands of the employers in Saudi Arabia”.

“The ban will remain in force until the conditions are deemed fitting,” Mukasa said in a letter sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Uganda’s Independent magazine said the letter came days after an audio recording circulated on social media in which a number of Ugandan women claimed to be in prison in Saudi Arabia and shared stories of abuse.

“This recording resulted in a lot of public outcry, and many think it could have been the peak for government’s final decision on the matter,” the paper said.

The decision came six months after Saudi Arabia and Uganda signed a memorandum of understanding that enabled Ugandan domestic workers to seek employment in Saudi Arabia. It was seen as a way of addressing high unemployment rates among young people in Uganda.

“Our expectations were that with the signing of the agreement, trafficking in persons to Saudi Arabia would stop,” Mukasa said.

Uganda becomes the fourth country after Indonesia, Ethiopia and the Philippines to ban their nationals from travelling to Saudi to work as domestic workers over concerns of abuse.

According to Ugandan figures, about 500 housemaids have gone to Saudi Arabia since the deal took effect.

https://www.today.ng/news/africa/70058/uganda-bans-housemaids-from-working-in-saudi

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/42cjgh/the_ugandan_government_has_banned_its_citizens/