JEDDAH, 16 July 2004 — Saudi Arabia’s newly formed human rights group said yesterday it was ready to look into alleged abuses against expatriate workers. The National Human Rights Association (NHRA) was reacting to a report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch which alleged that foreign workers in Saudi Arabia were “systematically abused and exploited, some of them living in conditions resembling slavery.”

A spokesman for the government-backed NHRA, Bandar ibn Mohammad Al-Hajjar, said the association “has not received any of the complaints cited in the HRW report,” but they “look forward to seeing the full report and getting to know the people who have been aggrieved and the parties who caused the harm in order to take up their cases.”

“We think we in the Kingdom are closer and are in a better position to follow up such complaints and seek to redress them,” he added

The report was released in London yesterday by Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of HRW’s Middle East and North Africa Division.

The report stated: “Discrimination against women in the Kingdom compounds the plight of female workers, some of whom have been victims of sexual abuse and forced confinement.”

The HRW said it conducted most of the interviews for the report in India, Bangladesh and the Philippines with workers who had recently returned from Saudi Arabia. It said it was denied permission to carry out field research in the country even though a delegation was invited to the Kingdom last year for talks with officials.

There are 8.8 million foreign workers, most of them Asians, in the Kingdom serving an indigenous population of about 17 million.

Hajjar did not rule out the possibility of worker abuses in the Kingdom, saying, “It is not surprising that there would be problems, whether between workers and employers, or between people in general, such as exploitation and rape anywhere in the world. The important thing is to strive to resolve them and prevent their recurrence.”

Suhaila Hammad, member of the NHRA, said: “The HRW report is an exaggeration. There might have been individual cases but they don’t reflect the majority. Otherwise, there would not be a lot of foreign workers working in the Kingdom.”

Dr. Bahija Ezze, another NHRA member in Jeddah said: “There is a committee for detection and follow-up, which receives complaints from expats. It has not received any complaints from foreign workers.”