The new law on human trafficking that the Council of Ministers has approved may strike some observers who have never associated the Kingdom with such problems as odd. They would be wrong. Trafficking is not some theoretical activity. It is a real issue — and a real problem. There is a number of foreigners whose presence in the Kingdom, whether legal or illegal, was organized by unscrupulous characters who trade in human misery.
The new law is deliberately wide in its interpretation of trafficking, and rightly so. Most people consider human trafficking as the organized movement, often the smuggling of illegal immigrants from one country to another — Kurds into the UK, for example, or Afghans to Australia; or shipping prostitutes, willing or unwilling, from East to West Europe. It can be that; there are organized rackets bringing beggars to the Kingdom, especially during Ramadan and the Haj season. But in this case, it is more complex.
It is not so much a question of people being brought to the Kingdom against their will as people being brought under false pretences and then kept against their will, maltreated, underpaid (if not unpaid), forced to work all hours or perform under conditions that amount, in extreme cases, to nothing less than slavery.
The problem starts because of Saudi Arabia’s reputation as a land with streets paved with gold — black gold. People imagine in poor countries that prosperity awaits them here. They make easy prey for unscrupulous traffickers.
Take, for example, the poor young man in Bangladesh with no hope of a job or the widow in Indonesia with two children to look after. First, they are deceived by a local agent who tells them that there is a job available in Saudi Arabia paying $1,000 or more a month. Having signed up, they arrive full of expectations — only to be told that they are going to get $100 a month or less and that there is nothing that they can do about it. Or maybe they are not paid at all. In some cases, maids are kept imprisoned in their employers’ homes, subject to sexual abuse from the men of the house and violence from them and the women.
It is not a widespread problem, but even one case would be one too many, and it is certainly more than that.
Like the organizers of the begging rackets, those who lie to people about salaries and the work description, those here who are part of the immigrant labor chain and complicit in those lies, and those employers at the end of the chain who refuse to pay the agreed wage or who treat their staff badly; all need to be tracked down and punished.
But this is not the most important part of this initiative. There is no shortage of existing laws on human trafficking, keeping people in bondage or sexually abusing them. The courts are usually very good at delivering justice when cases are lodged with them. It is about ensuring that those breaking the law are rapidly brought to court. That is where the main effort has to be. A few well publicized stiff sentences would do wonders in bringing the problem to a swift end.
