Human Trafficking in [Bahrain Street Children in [Bahrain] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Bahrain] [other countries] |
Human Trafficking & Modern-day Slavery In the
first ten years of the 21st
Century - 2000 to 2009
Bahrain is a destination country for men
and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation.
Men and women from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia,
Thailand, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and Eritrea migrate voluntarily to
Bahrain to work as formal sector laborers or domestic workers. Some, however,
face conditions of involuntary servitude after arriving in Bahrain, such as
unlawful withholding of passports, restrictions on movement, non-payment of
wages, threats, and physical or sexual abuse.
- U.S. State Dept Trafficking in Persons Report, June, 2009
[full
country report] |
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CAUTION: The following links have been
culled from the web to illuminate the situation in ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** Confronting
the Taboo of Human Trafficking www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=§ion=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2009/March/opinion_March51.xml
Forty-year-old Suryavathi
Rao fled the home of her employer that morning
shoeless with only a nightgown and bible to her name. The years of domestic labour
have taken their toll. She could
easily pass for 60 if not a few years older.
After working 16 hours a day, seven days a week for a year and a half,
Suryavathi could not take it anymore. She said through a translator that
her meagre salary of $108 a month had not been paid
for six months. She complained about
not being fed meals and surviving on the generosity of her neighbour another domestic worker who pulled together
leftovers to get by. Suryavathi could not get through three sentences without
breaking into tears. As a result of
her fleeing for protection, she has become a runaway worker with no
rights. Her employer holds her passport. The best she can hope for is to get the
passport back and hope that the shelter can give her enough money to buy a
ticket and fly home to Southern India.
It is not that simple of course, since back home Suryavathi
fears she won’t be welcomed back due to her “failure” to send back money and
keep a job. This is the life of a forced labourer and the complex world of human trafficking. Technically, Suryavathi
was not trafficked. She had a sponsor
agency that she paid $1100 to back in India and is still charging here 5 per
cent a month interest on the balance.
But she certainly did not expect slave like conditions when she
arrived. Bahrain
activists hope for better protection of workers' rights LACK OF LEGISLATION - Around 270,000 foreigners out of total population of
710,000 live in Bahrain, whose economy depends heavily on them. But the lack
of comprehensive legislation on foreign workers, mainly from Asia, who come
to Bahrain to work as domestic servants and in the construction industry
often means that they have to put up with physical abuse, sexual harassment,
non-payment or delay in payment of salary and long hours of work. "We want to use the workshop to
increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of the issue of exploitative labour and labour trafficking. ***
ARCHIVES *** Bur of Democracy,
Human Rights & Labor - Country Reports
on Human Rights Practices - 2005 SECTION 6 WORKER RIGHTS – [c] Unskilled foreign workers can become indentured servants and often lacked the knowledge to exercise their legal right to change employment. In numerous instances, employers withheld salaries from their foreign workers for months and even for years, and refused to grant them the necessary permission to leave the country. The government and the courts generally worked to rectify abuses if they were brought to their attention, but they otherwise focused little attention on the problem. The fear of deportation or employer retaliation prevented many foreign workers from making complaints to the authorities. Labor laws do not apply to domestic servants. There were numerous credible reports that domestic servants, especially women, were forced to work 12‑ or 16‑hour days, given little time off, were malnourished, and were subjected to verbal and physical abuse, including sexual molestation and rape. Between 30 to 40 percent of the attempted suicide cases handled by the government's psychiatric hospitals were foreign maids. It was estimated that there were 50,000 foreign housemaids working in the country who are predominantly of Sri Lankan, Indonesian, Indian, Bangladeshi and Filipino origins. During the year, there were several incidents of seriously abused housemaids reported in the press. Housemaids who have no embassy representation in the country (Indonesian and Sri Lankan) are often subject to the worst types of physical and sexual abuse. With no diplomatic mission to protect them and no established victim assistance shelter, runaway housemaids have often been returned by untrained police to abusing employers. Confronting
the Taboo of Human Trafficking www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=§ion=opinion&xfile=data/opinion/2009/March/opinion_March51.xml
Forty-year-old Suryavathi
Rao fled the home of her employer that morning
shoeless with only a nightgown and bible to her name. The years of domestic labour
have taken their toll. She could
easily pass for 60 if not a few years older.
After working 16 hours a day, seven days a week for a year and a half,
Suryavathi could not take it anymore. She said through a translator that
her meagre salary of $108 a month had not been paid
for six months. She complained about
not being fed meals and surviving on the generosity of her neighbour another domestic worker who pulled together
leftovers to get by. Suryavathi could not get through three sentences without
breaking into tears. As a result of
her fleeing for protection, she has become a runaway worker with no
rights. Her employer holds her
passport. The best she can hope for is
to get the passport back and hope that the shelter can give her enough money
to buy a ticket and fly home to Southern India. It is not that simple of course, since back
home Suryavathi fears she won’t be welcomed back
due to her “failure” to send back money and keep a job. This is the life of a forced labourer and the complex world of human trafficking. Technically, Suryavathi
was not trafficked. She had a sponsor
agency that she paid $1100 to back in India and is still charging here 5 per
cent a month interest on the balance.
But she certainly did not expect slave like conditions when she
arrived. Thai Sex Worker In Bahrain Seeks To Extricate Friends Caught In Catch 22 Situation Uoom told the reporter "I want to
warn other women. If you were convinced by someone who promised you a
well-paid job in Bahrain, don't trust them. They will tell you of a
dream-like city, but what you'll face is like a hell.” Cyber
sex sites spur vice probe A Bahrain human rights group has
launched an investigation to unmask the perpetrators behind more than 35
websites offering sex to customers here and in other Gulf countries. Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights (BYSHR) president Mohammed Al Maskati
said they were concerned about women who were being brought here on promises
of lawful employment only to find themselves victims of sexual
exploitation. He said women from
Europe, Middle East and Asia were being advertised for sex through more than
35 Arabic and English websites. Human
trafficking victims failing to turn up Migrant workers' rights activists
say they are helpless when it comes to assisting victims of human trafficking
in Bahrain to benefit from the government's general amnesty. Migrant Workers Protection Society (MWPS) action committee head Marietta Dias said women
being held against their will and controlled by others are likely to have
little chance of making it to the relevant authorities. "Human trafficking victims
are of concern to us, but what can we do?" she told the GDN. "We have
no idea where these people are being held or whether they have come here on
their own free will. "We hope
that these people can somehow take advantage of the amnesty, but how we get
to the victims is the main thing."
Her comments come after Thai Embassy officials said the fear of arrest
was preventing many of its people from taking part in the amnesty. No
Human-Trafficking Problem in Bahrain Social development minister Dr Fatima
Al Balooshi has rejected the idea of classifying
Bahrain as a country suffering from the problem of human trafficking. Human-trafficking is a global trend that
many countries, including developed ones, suffer from, she said in a
statement to Bahraini daily Akhbar Al Khaleej. She said her ministry had taken all legal
measures against the problem and has created a social protection network to
avoid it. Some of the steps taken are the setting up of Dar Al Aman For the protection and shelter of abused women, the
setting up the Bahrain Child Protection Centre, the introduction of an
anti-begging law and the opening a centre to shelter beggars, she said. Bahrain
activists hope for better protection of workers' rights LACK OF LEGISLATION - Around 270,000 foreigners out of total population of
710,000 live in Bahrain, whose economy depends heavily on them. But the lack of
comprehensive legislation on foreign workers, mainly from Asia, who come to
Bahrain to work as domestic servants and in the construction industry often
means that they have to put up with physical abuse, sexual harassment,
non-payment or delay in payment of salary and long hours of work. "We want to use the workshop to
increase awareness, knowledge and understanding of the issue of exploitative labour and labour trafficking. Invisible
victims of trafficking "A significant number of
human beings, including women, are trafficked into Bahrain. Unfortunately,
their plight seems to remain unknown to significant parts of Bahraini
society, perhaps because the victims tend to be foreign nationals or are
considered to be of low social status," Sigma Huda,
UN Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, has said. The Bangladesh-born lawyer said:
"Bahrain's victims of trafficking are often invisible victims because
they suffer in places that remain hidden to the public eye, such as private
homes, hotel rooms or labour camps." Gulf states urged to fight human trafficking Huda said female domestic workers,
roughly 50,000 of Bahrain's 300,000 migrant workers, were especially
disadvantaged. Some are lured into degrading jobs by recruiting agents with
false promises of decent work conditions. Huda described complaints of 14 to
16-hour working days, imprisonment in the home, the confiscation of passports,
deprivation from contacting home countries, withholding pay, or being forced
to steal food or eat scraps through lack of meals. "Physical abuse is also a
problem. Some victims told me of incidents of severe and traumatic abuse
including mental and verbal abuse," she said, adding that widely held
racist and sexist attitudes contributed to the prevalence of trafficking. A probe into alleged human trafficking
may be launched in relation to last week’s Gudaibiya
labour camp blaze, in which 16 workers were killed.
Indian Ambassador Balkrishna Shetty
has asked the Bahrain Foreign Ministry to investigate what he alleges were
violations of international laws against human trafficking. Islamic
Clerics Authorize Sex With Infants "The point is not to have
opposition from abroad. The point is for them to live and be protected in a
safe country. If a woman cannot get any protection in her country, cannot get
any protection from the courts, cannot get any protection in the marital home
- where will she go? Where will she go?" "All her life, the woman is a
prisoner in her own home. In the past, she would not go out to work, or to
study abroad. Very few women would go to university outside Bahrain. She is
at home in order to cook, sweep, and raise the children. How will she get an
education? There are women whose families are extremist. They even force them
to marry against their will. Freedom
House Country Report - Political Rights: 5 Civil Liberties: 5 Status: Partly Free Human Rights Overview
by Human Rights Watch – Defending Human Rights Worldwide U.S. Library of Congress
- Country Study 2nd
ID Seeks to Curb Lap Dancing at Clubs The crime often involves women
duped into moving to a foreign country, then forced to become sex workers
there. Greer said he learned about human trafficking after meeting his
Philippine wife when she was working in a South Korean nightclub. "When I was dating my wife, I
found out her sister in Bahrain hadn't been paid in 10 months. She was
working 16 hours a day, six days a week. Through many e-mails and telephone
calls we took this guy to court and he had to pay her and return her to the
Philippines," he said. www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=2163 BACKGROUND - Although the government has
worked to advance human rights and improve citizens’ ability to change their
government through more democratic means, the U.S. Department of State notes
several problems in the human rights area. While the Constitution calls
for an independent judiciary, courts are often subject to government pressure
and security forces are rarely tried for abusing their power. The
government limits the freedom of speech and of the press; freedoms of
assembly and association; and freedom of movement. Violence and
discrimination against women is common, as is discrimination based on
religion and ethnicity. Forced labor and human trafficking are also
problems. Trafficking
and forced labour of children in the United Arab
Emirates continues www.mengos.net/events/04newsevents/omanqataruaemain/children-trafficked.htm ANSAR BURNEY TRUST RESCUES TWO MORE
'CHILD CAMEL JOCKEYS' IN UAE - The Ansar Burney Welfare Trust
International is the only human rights organisation
working since last several years practically against slave labour in Middle East and Arab Countries to rescue the
innocent children working as child camel jockeys in very worst circumstances.
It has rescued total 318 children in this current year, 147 children on slave
in UAE and 171 children from Qatar, Bahrain,
Saudi Arabia, Muscat, Kuwait and other parts of the Arab and Middle East
countries and sent them back to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Srilanka
and other respective countries for their rehabilitation. Dhaka
blacklisted for human trafficking www.ecpat.net/eng/Ecpat_inter/IRC/newsdesk_articles.asp?SCID=1424 The State Department in its report
observed that Bangladesh is a country of origin and transit for women and
children trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation, involuntary
domestic servitude, and debt bondage. An estimated 10-20,000 women and
girls are trafficked annually to India, Pakistan, Bahrain, Kuwait and the
United Arab Emirates (UAE). All material used herein
reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC §
107 for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use |
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Human Trafficking in [Bahrain Street Children in [Bahrain] [other countries]Child Prostitution in [Bahrain] [other countries]