Saudi Arabia hit for failure to protect rights of RP maids, other domestics

MANILA, Philippines - A New York-based international human rights organization has criticized Saudi Arabia “for backsliding on human rights," which allegedly resulted in the suffering of thousands of female overseas domestic workers from “injustices in courts."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) claimed that many of these 1.5-million strong workers who mostly come from the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Ethiopia have suffered abuse from their employers.

However, hundreds of “severe" cases yearly involving employers who withhold salaries of workers for years, physically and sexually attack domestics, or keep them in “virtual slavery" are not being tried in court, according to HRW.

“Many cases never go to trial, as workers are unable to contact their embassies, are unfamiliar with the legal system, or have been threatened with spurious counter-charges of theft, witchcraft, or adultery," said the organization in an article it uploaded on its Web site last September 23, titled Separating Image from Substance in Saudi Arabia written by Clarisa Bencomo and Christoph Wilcke.

“In such cases, some domestic workers have been punished with imprisonment or lashings despite being victims themselves," HRW added.

Gaps in Saudi labor laws

According to the group, gaps in Saudi labor laws and restrictive immigration policies have made it easy for employers to exploit female foreign domestics.

HRW said that yearly, thousands of complaints about the inhumane conditions of migrant workers in the hands of their employers are being received by embassies and Saudi authorities.

These complaints include taking the workers’ passports, withholding their wages, depriving them of sufficient food, locking them in the house around the clock, and demanding them to work for 16 hours daily with no days off.

However, the organization said “these conditions are considered the norm and do not generally lead to court trials."

Even in “rare" cases where employers are tried for serious crimes, convictions are seldom, if not nil, according to HRW. “(C)ourts have not normally been able to convict the offender or give fair restitution to the worker."

It cited an “egregious" case in 2008, wherein a Saudi court reportedly dropped charges against an employer of an Indonesian woman. This despite the employer’s confession and extensive forensic evidence that the worker was abused.

No written penal code

Saudi Arabia’s criminal justice system urgently needs accountability and transparency, according to HRW. The organization said that because the Kingdom has no written penal code, both foreigners and its citizens are often being arrested arbitrarily.

“In perhaps the only country in the world without a written penal code, nationals and foreigners alike routinely face arrest, interrogation, and punishments of imprisonment and flogging for vague offenses such as “disobedience to the ruler" or "insulting Islam," said HRW.

Of the more than 60 criminal cases it investigated, HRW found out that “ordinary criminal defendants, including children, usually did not have access to legal counsel or other means of preparing for their defense."

“Many only learned of their trial dates from their prison guards the night before. Statements extracted under torture were stamped with the defendant’s fingerprint, meaning they could not be challenged in court," HRW said.

“Judges gave defendants only little time to speak, and often prohibited cross-examination of prosecution witnesses or the presentation of defense witnesses. Court documents record judges sentencing defendants while simultaneously expressing doubt as to their guilt," it added.

Rare criticism

HRW said that despite worsening human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, foreign governments “have done next to nothing to achieve redress of these realities."

It observed that “criticism is (getting) more and more rare" as foreign governments “pushed for new business deals in a kingdom flush with revenue from consecutive years of record oil prices."

“While the US, Britain and France publicly welcome Saudi claims of commitment to reform, they rarely publicly criticize the pace or substance of the government’s efforts," according to the organization.

“Gone are the days of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ballyhooed speech at the American University in Cairo in June 2005, when she protested the jailing of three prominent Saudi Arabian reform advocates…More common of late, however, are comments like that of British official Kim Howells, who publicly embraced the “shared values" of the British and Saudi governments during King ‘Abdallah’s state visit to London in October 2007," said HRW.

“France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, too, rolled out the red carpet for the Saudi king and kept mum about human rights abuses in the kingdom," it added.

HRW said that while the US considers Saudi Arabia in the “worst offender category for trafficking in persons and denying religious freedom," it “nonetheless fails to impose the sanctions legally prescribed for such offenders."

What should be done?

It urged the US, Britain, and France to help ordinary Saudis realize their human rights by offering public support to mechanisms that would increase accountability and transparency.

“Foreign governments should be pushing the Saudi government to move quickly on a written penal code that, among other things, protects the exercise of human rights."

HRW said these governments could offer technical assistance in developing a Saudi judiciary trained in modern principles of criminal law.

The assistance must include measures to strengthen the office of the inspector of the Saudi judiciary and the appeals court judges to ensure that lower court proceedings comply with the law.

“That means stopping trials or overturning verdicts where fundamental due process has been violated," said HRW.

The organization also urged foreign governments to help in building strong mechanisms for a more transparent Saudi criminal justice system.

HRW said this could be done through the creation of professional associations for criminal defense lawyers and the creation of free legal aid programs for all juvenile, poor, and capital defendants. - ARCS, GMANews.TV

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