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Human Rights Watch July 2004 Vol. 16, No. 5(E) Bad Dreams: Exploitation and Abuse of Migrant Workers in Saudi Arabia SUMMARY.................................................................................................................................... 1 METHODOLOGY .....................................................................................................................6 KEY RECOMMENDATIONS ................................................................................................ 8 I. MIGRANT COMMUNITIES IN SAUDI ARABIA......................................................11 II. THE FOREIGN LABOR SPONSORSHIP SYSTEM AND ITS ABUSES.............19 Workers’ Contracts and Wages: False Promises ................................................................20 Job Substitution.......................................................................................................................22 “Free Visa” Illusions ..............................................................................................................25 III. VULNERABILITY AND EXPLOITATION...............................................................27 Official Documents: Consequences of Illegal Employer Practices.................................29 Fear of Arrest and Deportation............................................................................................32 No Access to Medical Care ...................................................................................................33 Long Working Hours without Overtime Pay.....................................................................36 Unpaid Salaries........................................................................................................................38 Denial of Paid Vacation Leave .............................................................................................41 Summary Dismissals...............................................................................................................42 IV. WOMEN WORKERS: FORCED CONFINEMENT, LABOR EXPLOITATION, AND SEXUAL ABUSE........................................................................47 Labor Exploitation and Forced Confinement: Voices of the Victims ...........................48 Legal Obligations of the Government of Saudi Arabia....................................................53 Sexual Abuse and Rape..........................................................................................................57 Pregnancy.................................................................................................................................64 Escape Attempts and Consequences...................................................................................67 V. LABOR GRIEVANCES: THE GOVERNMENT’S PROCESS FOR COMPLAINTS AND REMEDY ...........................................................................................69 Available Remedies.................................................................................................................72 Official Labor Grievance Bodies..........................................................................................73 Complaints of Migrant Workers...........................................................................................75 VI. DEPORTATION OF MIGRANT WORKERS.........................................................79 Deportees with Outstanding Labor Grievances ................................................................80 Current Conditions in Deportation Jails .............................................................................82 Legal Responsibility for Conditions in Deportation Jails.................................................85 VII. MIGRANT WORKERS IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM: RIGHTS DENIED .....................................................................................................................................85 The Lack of Transparency.....................................................................................................87 Imprisoned Women Migrants...............................................................................................90 Torture, Coerced Confessions, and Unfair Trials: Clear Patterns...................................92 The Government’s Obligations under Domestic and International Law....................105 VIII. THE DEATH PENALTY AND EXECUTIONS: MIGRANT WORKER VICTIMS....................................................................................................................................108 The Government’s Obligations under International Law..............................................118 Mortal Remains: Whereabouts Unknown.........................................................................121 IX. RECOMMENDATIONS................................................................................................123 To The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia..................................................123 To the Minister of Labor.....................................................................................................124 To the Minister of Interior..................................................................................................125 To the Minister of Justice....................................................................................................125 To the Consultative Council of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia .....................................125 To United Nations Treaty Monitoring Bodies.................................................................126 To the Labor and Justice Ministers of Countries of Origin, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka..............................................................127 APPENDIX A: INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION (ILO) CONVENTIONS IN FORCE IN SAUDI ARABIA .......................................................129 APPENDIX B...........................................................................................................................131 Letter to the Parliamentary Relations and Devolution Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, from the Clerk of the Committee, 23 September 2003 .......131 Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from the Parliamentary Relations And Devolution Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 13 October 2003.....131 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .....................................................................................................134 SUMMARY “It was like a bad dream” is the way one migrant worker from the Philippines summed up his experiences in Saudi Arabia. Another worker, from Bangladesh, told us: “I slept many nights beside the road and spent many days without food. It was a painful life. I could not explain that life.” A woman in a village in India, whose son was beheaded following a secret trial, could only say this: “We have no more tears, our tears have all dried up.” She deferred to her husband to provide the account of their son’s imprisonment and execution in Jeddah. It is undeniable that many foreigners employed in the kingdom, in jobs from the most menial to the highest skilled, have returned home with no complaints. But for the women and men who were subjected to abysmal and exploitative working conditions, sexual violence, and human rights abuses in the criminal justice system, Saudi Arabia represented a personal nightmare. In 1962, then-King Faisal abolished slavery in Saudi Arabia by royal decree. Over forty years later, migrant workers in the purportedly modern society that the kingdom has become continue to suffer extreme forms of labor exploitation that sometimes rise to slavery-like conditions. Their lives are further complicated by deeply rooted gender, religious, and racial discrimination. This provides the foundation for prejudicial public policy and government regulations, shameful practices of private employers, and unfair legal proceedings that yield judicial sentences of the death penalty. The overwhelming majority of the men and women who face these realities in Saudi Arabia are low-paid workers from Asia, Africa, and countries in the Middle East. This report gives voice to some of their stories. It is based on information gathered from migrant workers and their families in mud brick houses off dirt roads in tropical agricultural areas of southwest India, in apartments in densely packed neighborhoods of metropolitan Manila, and in simple dwellings in rural villages of Bangladesh. The victims include skilled and unskilled workers; Muslims, Hindus, and Christians; young adults traveling outside their home countries for the first time; and married men, and single and divorced women, with children to support. In Saudi Arabia, these workers delivered dairy products, cleaned government hospitals, repaired water pipes, collected garbage, and poured concrete. Some of them baked bread and worked in restaurants; others were butchers, barbers, carpenters, and plumbers. Women migrants cleaned, cooked, cared for children, worked in beauty salons, and sewed custom-made dresses and gowns. Unemployed or underemployed in their countries of origin, and often impoverished, these men and women sought only the 1 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH VOL. 16, NO. 5(E) opportunity to earn wages and thus improve the economic situation for themselves and their families. This report is the first comprehensive examination of the variety of human rights abuses that foreign workers experience in Saudi Arabia. The voices of these migrants provide a window into a country