oh yeah, paradise on earth.. Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery
from thedubailife.com
"Thousands of laborers arrive in Dubai every year from South Asia. These poorly paid construction workers enter the construction industry in Dubai, and often step into a nightmare of long hour work days with no day of rest, earning meager wages that may be withheld or unpaid altogether. Standard salary for a full day's of work is in the range of 4 to 6 US dollars. These workers face drastic living conditions which may be considered unfit for human beings in most of the other countries. They are often accommodated in cramped labor-camps, up to twenty to a room, without privacy. They can do little to relieve their misery. Some employers take their passports and "lose" them so workers cannot return home. It is also illegal for workers to strike, which means that workers are often asked to work without pay and without the documents to return home. Some workers say they haven't been home in years and that their salary has been withheld to pay back loans."
"In the Emirates, more than three-quarters of the population of around five million people are from abroad, immigrants from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and China providing the low-wage muscle behind one of the world's great building booms. In Dubai alone this numbers to almost a quarter of a million workers from the Indian sub-continent.
Currently they enjoy few legal rights, there is no minimum wage, many – if not all - work in the extreme heat, and many of them live in military-style desert camps. To make matters worse this is not the first sign of disgruntled rumblings amongst those that are employed to build Dubai’s dream. There have been at least two dozen strikes in the last year alone in the United Arab Emirates, most centring upon unpaid salaries."
"The rulers of the Emirate of Dubai have for the first time commented on the lawsuit filled against them in the US, which has been brought by a group of unnamed parents and apparently thousands of children.
Dubai has had a flourishing camel racing industry and has for years been accused of using young children as jockeys used to race in the many races that take place every week. These children, mainly from the Pakistan-India region, were sometimes as young as three, lived in basic conditions and were paid a basic wage. The more worrying accusations are that these children were effectively bought from poor parents in the their respective countries or sometimes just taken and held as slaves. In recent years many dozens of children have been sent back to Pakistan and some reunited with their parents, no one can deny it was a life not befitting children.
It has been illegal to use children as camel jockeys in the UAE since 1993, but rigorous enforcement of the law was always overlooked for the sake of the "sport". The writ was filed against the rulers of Dubai, who have for the first time commented publically on the matter saying that a lot of the work they have done in recent years is being overlooked by people filing the case."
From Human Rights Watch:
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United Arab Emirates
UAE: Draft Labor Law Violates International Standards
New Law Should Protect Right to Strike and Cover Domestic Workers
The United Arab Emirates’ proposed labor law falls far short of international standards for workers’ rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The law should be revised to protect workers’ rights to organize, bargain collectively and strike, and to cover excluded groups such as domestic workers.
March 25, 2007 Press Release
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The UAE's Draft Labor Law: Human Rights Watch’s Comments and Recommendations
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is currently considering revisions to its main labor law. Like other countries in the Gulf, the UAE is heavily reliant upon the labor of migrant workers, primarily from South Asia. According to figures from 2005, 95 percent of the UAE’s labor pool, some 2.7 million workers, are migrants, many of whom work in the construction and domestic service industries. Meaningful reforms in the new labor law would have a significant and positive impact across South Asia and the Gulf and, if the final version of the law integrates key labor protections, it could become a leading model for the region.
March 25, 2007 Background Briefing
Audio Commentary: UAE - Draft Labor Law Violates International Standards
The current draft excludes domestic workers completely along with a few other categories of workers, including farm workers. (Run time: 3:12)
March 25, 2007 Audio Clip
Building Towers, Cheating Workers
Exploitation of Migrant Construction Workers in the United Arab Emirates
Based on extensive interviews with workers, government officials and business representatives, this 71-page report documents serious abuses of construction workers by employers in the United Arab Emirates. These abuses include unpaid or extremely low wages, several years of indebtedness to recruitment agencies for fees that UAE law says only employers should pay, the withholding of employees’ passports, and hazardous working conditions that result in apparently high rates of death and injury."
"Letter to UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan
Your government’s policies toward human rights defenders in the United Arab Emirates are an important measure of its commitment to respect and protect the basic rights of UAE residents. For this reason we are seriously concerned about recent steps taken by UAE authorities that seem targeted to harass and silence activists attempting to monitor human rights in the Emirates. We urge you to put an immediate stop to these policies, and to make clear that the government intends to protect the ability of human rights defenders to carry out activities without interference."
from Dubai.metblogs.com
"Dubai's human rights situation is sickening, Even though dubai is becoming a tourist destination and is coming up on the world map its just sad to see that the country is doing nothing in regards to this situation. most people visiting do not see the situation as it is hidden, there is no freedom of press, things are hidden from the public, workers are made to work like crazy, they have no rights whatsoever in most companies. I can go on and on and on about this what do you guys have to say..... what brought this sudden outburst of anger and frustration, on the way back from work today I saw about 50-60 people jammed standing into a imigration transportation truck being herded somewhere like animals, probably for minor immigration violations."
from the US State Dept
"The United Arab Emirates [map] is a federation of sheikhdoms located in SE Arabia, on the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. The federation consists of seven sheikhdoms: Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Qaiwain. The city of Abu Dhabi in Abu Dhabi is the capital. The UAE has an open economy with a high per capita income and a sizable annual trade surplus. Its wealth is based on oil and gas output (about 30% of GDP), and the fortunes of the economy fluctuate with the prices of those commodities. Since the discovery of oil in the UAE more than 30 years ago, the UAE has undergone a profound transformation from an impoverished region of small desert principalities to a modern state with a high standard of living.
The United Arab Emirates is a destination country for men, women, and children trafficked from South and East Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for involuntary servitude and for sexual exploitation. An estimated 10,000 women from sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, South and East Asia, Iraq, Iran, and Morocco may be victims of sex trafficking in the U.A.E. Women also migrate from India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Ethiopia, and the Philippines to work as domestic servants, but may have their passports confiscated, be denied permission to leave the place of employment in the home, and face sexual or physical abuse by their employers. Similarly, men from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan come to the U.A.E. to work in the construction industry, but may be subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude as they are coerced to pay off recruitment and travel costs that can exceed two years’ wages, sometimes having their wages denied for months at a time. Victims of child camel jockey trafficking may still remain in the U.A.E. Once a destination for thousands of young boys trafficked from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sudan, and Mauritania to work as camel jockeys, the U.A.E. enacted a law banning the practice in July 2005, and all identified victims were repatriated at the government’s expense to their home countries. Questions persist as to the effectiveness of the ban, and the number of victims is still unidentified. - U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2006"
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It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story...
AGATHA CHRISTIE, Life magazine, May 14, 1956
Updated On: 5/3/07 at 06:45 PM
