11 May, 2006

Saudis Act Like They're in Arabia, Abuse "Slave" in USA

So apparently a Saudi Arabian couple has been indicted (the wife just plead guilty) for virutally enslaving a young Indonesian woman in their Colorado home. According to the indicment, the couple kept the young woman for four years, forcing to work long hours for less than &2 a day. She had to sleep on mattress in the basement and suffer repeated sexual assaults from the pig of a husband. Though I normally dont like to link to him, Gateway pundit has a round-up of links detailing cases where Saudis in America abused, assaulted and enslaved their help.

My heart goes out to the young woman, and I hope they throw the husband in jail for a long time and that he gets to enjoy being repeatedly raped while there. Though I hate to say it, I'm not very surprised at all that a Saudi couple enslaved/abused an employee...its not really different from standard treatment practices of employees back in Arabia. The Religious Policeman has tons of posts (too many to list here) on the abysmal state/treatment of foreign nationals working in Saudi Arabia. Invisible in the eyes of the Arabians they work for, working meager jobs the Arabians wont or refuse to do, and kept locked in a virtual system of chattel slavery with no rights or recourse to law, the plight of millions of guest workers in Saudi Arabia is ignored by the rest of the world and Amensty International, Human Rights Watch, UN, most of the left, worker's rights groups, etc.

Which frankly is surprising given that the majority of guest workers are "brown-skinned peoples" from Third-World countries and that there is a strong influence of "racism" in Arabian's treatment of these workers. But of course, in today's "liberal" discourse, we are only concerned with the plight of the poor, mistreated Muslim in the West and not with the plight/treatment of plight over everyone else in the Middle East. Perhaps because Arabians are "brown-skinned peoples" from a Third World country and it is "imperialist" and "racist" to critique them? Whatever you can call it, its hypocrasy dressed up as "mulitculturalist relativism".

So why did this Saudi Arabian couple enslave their employee? Because she was Indonesian, because she was dark-skinned and therefore less in their eyes, and--greatest of all sins--she was a woman.

3 comments:

vergueishon said...

I bet she was undocumented...that's how they keep workers, who are often from SE Asia and Africa, "enslaved" in Gulf countries. Chances of citizenship in many of those countries are close to nil. HRW and Amnesty (Amnesty's articles are a bit dated though) have both criticize the treatment of migrant workers in places like Saudi Arabia. The media, on the other hand, doesn't, and that includes the left, and the right. What's with all the liberal bashing around here?

Meridith said...

Meep!

vergueishon said...

Thanks for joining in, Meriditty! But, could you elaborate on your comment?
:)