A desperate call for help

Earlier this month a video by a Bangladeshi housemaid working in Saudi Arabia went viral in social media. In the video posted to her Facebook page, 25-year-old Sumi Akter said that her employer had physically assaulted her. “I won’t perhaps live longer. Please save me. They locked me up for 15 days and gave me hardly anything to eat. They tied and beat me up and then burned my arms with hot oil,” Akter said while holding burn scars on her hand to the camera. She also claimed that she was sexually assaulted by her employers.

“They often beat me up at my first employer’s home and then they took me to another home where I had the same experience,” a tearful Akter described her ordeal mentioning that she was recording the video in the bathroom in an attempt to hide from her employer.

In spite of enduring this agonizing experience, Sumi Akter can count herself lucky because she survived to tell the tale of her suffering. In the last 4 years, more than 150 women returned dead from Saudi Arabia, according to BRAC Migration Program. Sixty-six of them committed suicide.

In 2017, Abiron Begum left her home in Khulna for Saudi Arabia in a bid to change the fate of her impoverished family. But, her dream turned into a nightmare; she returned to Dhaka on October 24 in a coffin.

In Saudi Arabia, where 40-year old Abiron worked as a domestic helper, she was regularly beaten by her employer. She was traumatized and used to describe her suffering to her family over phone whenever she got a chance to talk to them. Reportedly, her employers inflicted unspeakable torture on her; at one instance, they shoved her head against a hot grill. But her cries for help would met with mournful silence from her family. They had no power to do anything to save her. Eventually they completely lost contact with her.

Systemized oppression

Foreign workers in Saudi Arabia work under a system known as Kafala. This is a form of visa sponsorship, in which a migrant is tied to her employer (called Kafeel). She is not allowed to leave her employer without their permission. She is also not allowed to change employer or travel overseas. If she escapes from an abusive employer, police has the authority to arrest and deport her.

The Kafala system grants sponsoring employers substantial control over workers and is notorious for limiting workers’ rights. According to Human Rights Watch, due to the Kafal system, some employers feel entitled to exert ‘ownership’ over a domestic worker. The Same organization also found in a 2004 study that female workers from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and other South and South-East Asian countries regularly face long working hours without overtime pay, physical and mental torture and sexual abuse by the hands of their employers.

“I haven’t found a single case where the employers have been punished. So the Saudi employers think they can do whatever they want with these workers without facing any consequences,” told Shariful Islam Hasan of the migration programme at BRAC to Al Jazeera last week.

According to BRAC, this year alone saw 900 female migrants return home from Saudi Arabia after sexual harassment and physical abuse by their employers. Last year the number was more than 1300.

Bangladesh government, which has long denied allegations of sexual abuse of female workers in Saudi Arabia, also admitted in a report in September that Bangladeshi female workers are returning home after being subjected to various forms of abuse in Saudi Arabia.

Exploited at home

One common theme running through all the abuse stories is that when the victim asked for help they received little or no help from the recruiting agencies that sent them.

Golam Moshi, ambassador of Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia, partially blamed the manpower agents in Bangladesh for ill-treatment of some of the female migrant workers at the hands of Saudi employers. In an interview with Al Jazeera, he accused them of luring poor women from the poverty-ridden areas of the country.

“They are untrained and unprepared for a foreign land and culture,” he said, “Thus most of them get mentally traumatized and homesick when they start working here in Saudi households.”

Shameem Ahmed Chowdhury, secretary of Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting agencies (BAIRA), a powerful association of more than 1200 recruiting agencies, denied the allegations made by ambassador Moshi. “There are many government imposed checks and balances in place in the whole process of sending a female worker to Saudi Arabia. It is not possible for a recruiting agency alone to buck the system and lure women with false information, we only send women who are willing to go,” said BAIRA secretary. “The government should make sure those checks and balances are functioning properly, instead of wholesale blaming us,” he added.

Mizanur Rahman, managing director of Elegant Overseas, a Dhaka based manpower recruiting agency, said he is always cautious about where he is sending the workers. “If one of the female workers return to Bangladesh due to abuse or other issues, I am liable to pay her return ticket and sometimes her treatment cost. So I do not want to take risk by sending her to an unreliable employer,” said Mr Rahman.

He also acknowledged that most women are not trained properly before being sent to Saudi Arabia. “Whenever we try to set up training centers in Dhaka we run into regulatory hurdles,” he said. He urged the government to make it easier for the recruiting agencies to set up training centers.

‘Stop sending our women to Saudi’

Sumi Akter’s viral video has thrust the issue of female migrant abuse to the forefront of a nationwide debate.

Migrants’ rights groups and women’s rights advocates alike have urged the government to stop sending women as domestic help to Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, a group of women’ rights activists under the banner “Bangladesh besides the Female Migrant Workers,” submitted a memorandum stating 13 demands, to the Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment.

In the parliament, Members of the opposition party urged the government to stop sending female workers to Saudi Arabia. “The media is abuzz with reports of abuse and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia. We want to know what steps the government has taken in saving these women from abuse,” asked Jatiya Party MP Mujibul Haque Chunnu, who is also a former state minister for Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment.

In response, Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Minister Imran Ahmed said the chargé d’affaires of the Saudi embassy in Dhaka was asked to raise the issue with the Saudi foreign ministry.

Another MP from The Jatiya Party, Kazi Firoz Rashid, accused the Bangladesh government and the Bangladesh Embassy in Saudi Arabia of negligence for failing to help the abused workers. “We are an independent nation and we have dignity. We cannot let this happen to our women. So I want a straight answer from the minister. When are you going to stop sending domestic workers to Saudi Arabia?” he asked.

Minister Imran, in response said, in the past three months the government had suspended licenses of 160 recruiting agencies and revoked three.

Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on the other hand, while acknowledged that Bangladeshi female workers continue to suffer abuse while working in Saudi Arabia, refused to stop them from going to the country.

“We don’t want to prevent those women who want to go, because, in Bangladesh, men and women have equal rights. We refuse to treat women as second class citizens, and let them be left behind” the foreign minister told reporters last week in his office in Dhaka.

Meanwhile, on Friday Morning, Sumi Akter returned to Dhaka on a Saudi Airlines flight. After receiving her at the airport, officials of the Wage Earners’ Welfare Board (WEWB) sent her off to her parents’ house in Panchagarh’s Boda upazila.

After Sumi Akter’s video went viral, Bangladesh Consulate in Jeddah intervened in the matter. She was rescued by Saudi police but her employer refused to give her the ‘exit permit’ until he was paid back 22,000 riyals, which he claims he spent to hire Sumi Akter as housemaid. He was eventually forced by a Saudi labor court to give her the permission to go. The court also dismissed his plea for repayment.

Sumi Akter’s return marks the end of an almost six-month long ordeal for her. She went to Saudi Arabia on May 30.

I produced this report as part of my successful application to the Columbia University’s M.S. in Data Journalism program for the classs of 2021