TEHRAN (FNA)- Laith Marouf, journalist and activist, says the Kafala, Saudi sponsorship system, builds a feeling that Saudi citizens are superior to foreigners, paving the way for their “inhuman behavior” toward foreign workers.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with FNA, Laith Marouf said, “Some Saudi men view it as their right to violate a domestic worker… [by] withholding the passports of the foreign worker, or withholding their pay with no consequence, or even abusing them physically and murdering them.”
Laith Marouf is a senior media consultant who has launched and managed TV networks in Canada. He lived and worked over a decade in Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Below is the full text of the interview:
Q: Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia are subject to arrest, torture and even execution. Saudi Arabia reportedly has the highest rate of execution of foreigners. How do you view this matter?
A: There is no such thing as “Saudi Arabia'' nor “Saudi People”; there is the proud Arabian peoples and their lands the Arabian Peninsula, and they are under occupation by the House of Saud. It must be humiliating to call an Arabian person by the name of the family that rules them by force. Imagine if we call British people Windsorians because the ruling family in the UK is the House of Windsor?
But to answer your question, it is a very tragic situation for foreign workers in Saudi Occupied Arabia. Most of them come from overpopulated countries with very low GDP, where remittance from diaspora workers represent a huge part of their economy. This means that their governments are happy to export their labor, and has a surplus of those who would volunteer for the work. At the same time, the Saudi Regime knows that there is an endless supply of workers from these countries, and not many other choices of employability are available to them. This leads to the tragic situation, where Saudi authorities and employers can abuse foreign workers from Asia and Africa with no fear of any repercussions for their actions. The only exception has been Nepal, a country that decided the lives of its citizens are more important than the remittances they may send back from working in Arabia; and has banned its citizens from working in [Persian] Gulf countries.
Q: How do you find Saudi Arabia’s Kafala (sponsorship system)?
A: The Kafala system, where a citizen has to sponsor a foreigner for them to have the right to work in Saudi, is very problematic. For one, it sets a legal standard where a foreigner is not trustworthy, where a citizen has to guarantee them and be responsible for all their actions. Basically, the Kafala system is based on the assumption that foreigners are less human than citizens. This builds a feeling in the citizens that they are superior, and opens the door for such inhuman behavior as sponsors withholding the passports of the foreign worker, or withholding their pay with no consequence, or even abusing them physically and murdering them. Similarly, if a foreign worker falls foul of the law in Saudi, there is little hope for them to receive a fair trial, after all not even citizens have access to fair trials in Saudi; but the situation for foreign workers is worse since they usually do not have money to pay for adequate legal representation, and their embassies do not help them.
Q: Would you explain about the condition of female workers in Saudi Arabia, and how they are likely to face sexual abuses?
A: Female foreign workers in Saudi have to deal with the same issues as their male counterparts we referred to in the last answer, but added to it the issues of sexual abuse and rape; although it is also common that males are raped in Saudi. Given that citizens are encouraged to feel superior to foreign workers, it is very common for a Saudi employer to view their domestic worker, women that are desperate for money to help their families back home, as part of “Ma-Malakat Aimanokum” (What your right hands own); i.e. Slaves. With this mentality, some Saudi men view it as their right to violate a domestic worker, and therefore sexually abuse and rape them.
In some cases, that surfaced, domestic workers escaped such abusive work conditions, and sought refuge in their embassies; those are the lucky few. But the vast majority of cases of sexual abuse of domestic workers end tragically. Almost every week there are reports of domestic workers either committing suicide, or suicided, meaning their employer kills them and claims they committed suicide.
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