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| Sri Lankan Maid |
Much of the work in places like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia is performed by immigrant workers; mostly from Asia. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, strong allies of the US and the recipients of billions in US weaponry are among the worst abusers. Many of the workers are from countries like the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka; many of them are women.
The horrible abuse of these workers, including torture, does not receive the coverage in the US mass media that Iran does. They need to prepare the US public for the likelihood of a strike on Iran for one thing, employers torturing workers in countries whose leaders are propped up partially or in total by US taxpayer’s money and arms is not good news.
Another extreme case of employer abuse has emerged with regard to a Sri Lankan maid working in Saudi Arabia. LP Ariyawathie a 49 year old woman who left her home to work as a maid for a Saudi employer has returned to Sri Lanka with no less than 24 nails and a needle in her body. Her employer drove nails in to her body as punishment she said. Doctors that X-rayed her said that some of them were as long as two inches, one in her forehead, some in her legs and hands. (Click on link under the photo for story and links to further reading)
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| Nails in her hands, courtesy of her employer |
Some 1.8 million Sri Lankans work abroad, about 70% of them are women and most of them work in the Middle East according to the BBC. As shocking as this sounds, it is an ongoing problem. In 2008 Saudi judges awarded $670 in damages to an Indonesian maid who contracted gangrene after her employer tied her up for a month and left her without food. She lost numerous fingers and toes. The woman’s employer was to receive 35 lashes for the crime but the judge that awarded the damages dropped the charges against her.
The Indonesian maid could be lucky given Saudi style justice. A previous judge convicted her of falsely accusing her employers and sentenced her to 79 lashes but that decision was overturned.
Another Sri Lankan woman was repeatedly beaten by her Saudi employer, “After three months, I asked Madam for my salary and she started to beat me with iron bars and wooden sticks," "Sometimes she would take a hot iron and burn me or heat up a knife and put it on my body." she told the BBC. Her employer put her on a plane back Sri Lanka and was not prosecuted.
Another Sri Lankan woman working in Lebanon was repeatedly raped by her employer’s 18 year-old son and his friends. Complaining to the boy’s mother didn’t help, “There was little comfort from Soma's employer, who seemed to think she had employed a prostitute for her son rather than a cleaner for her house.” The BBC correspondent covering the case writes.
All migrant workers, literally millions of people, suffer abuse at the hands of employers like this every day, men as well as women, but the addition of rape adds another dimension to the torture and horror of it all. The finding of 72 bodies in Mexico the other day that were apparently workers trying to enter the United States fills me with rage and makes me want to cry at the same time. All workers should feel such deep solidarity with these brothers and sisters at their plight and yet these economic refugees, after suffering all sorts of brutality at the hands of their transporters and the authorities when they're captured, are demonized when they arrive at their destination, driven to leave their homes and families by the forces of the free market.
What good is the UN and the numerous other agencies and NGO’s that claim to exist to protect worker’s rights? Good intentions are not enough; the road to hell is paved with good intentions. These few examples are a tiny, tiny example of the sort of abuse that workers around the world experience every day from employers. We all know that this goes on here in the United States, in the slums of Bombay, the sweat shops of Vietnam and the mines and agricultural estates of Latin America it is even worse.
The UN is a capitalist club that will do nothing. The liberal watchdog groups can make us aware of these conditions but will not be able to do anything about them for the most part. The building of militant, powerful and globally coordinated workers organizations will begin the process of reducing it but only the transformation of society along democratic socialist lines, a socialist world federation of states, will eradicate it.
2 comments:
There are several reasons I think why workers are prevented from feeling an intense solidarity with the plight of migrant and exploited and poor workers outside of our own small worlds.
There is of course the dominance of capitalist media that does not inform us. And as you mentioned when we are informed - we are taught that charities , the church, NGO's and the UN are working as fast as they can and eventually perhaps they will close the gap and remedy the ills-despite clear evidence that things only get worse.
And if we get a glimpse of the reality -we succumb to feelings of powerlessness, that can turn against the desperate and the poor internationally and even within our own countries, towns and cities and communities. So we learn to blame the victims for their own powerlessness in more ways than we can imagine.
So many factors affect our consciousness.
Human beings are inately social, we need each other to survive and develop. And we look to what is out here to identify with. We seek identity within groups, as family members, national and ethnic identities, gender and race, the list goes on. For most workers this is all we have before us, all that is offered by capitalism . They use our affiliations and strong bonds of loyalty to unite us when it serves their purpose and to divide us when it serves their purpose.
There is one collective identity that send shivers up their spine -and that is collective internationalidentity as the working class. Collective identities are often romanticized by those who belong, those who feel disconnected and isolated. This is because we need to belong to communities to thrive and to prosper and offer mutual aid.
But identifiying as a member of the working class offers the potential not just to survive and ameliorate the harsh conditions of life, but to change society, to own the resources and products of our labour and to administer the fruits of the earth and of our labour, to plan our economies in a way that will provide for all. A manner that unites us first along material lines and in our consciousness.
As well as we have learned in the last 5-6 decades we will be able to collectively learn that we must act as stewards of the earth.
How do we change our consciousness, through acting collectively to change material conditions, to change the economic organization of our society. And as this blogger has said only a militant and collective struggle as workers can accomplish this.
It is simply true that people are informed by indifference when confronted by these horrors .people hide behind their own flags too much.this reminds me of what happened to seans grandmother in "donegal woman".I saw in the news where the Chilean miners were singing their own anthem in the mine.they take all the risks so that their leaders and bosses can profit.we need a fairer distribution of wealth throughout the world.
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