Well - I would not go that far. Arabs like everyone else has there share of good and bad people. Anyways, debating whether Arabs are good or bad is subjective.
However, the larger point is that Bangladeshis often create their own situation. In the case of Kuwait, I would ask the Bangladeshi embassy why they allowed such a debacle to take place. The labor camps are open to everyone - the embassy should be making quarterly visits to these camps to understand the situation. How can laborers fight for their rights thru regular channels when they are working 14 hrs aday, cooking their own food, cleaning their own laundry and have one weekly holiday to do everything else - and forget about putting together the money to hire a lawyer.
Obviously the CTG has also failed to play its role. We have been having worker issues in the last few years in Malaysia, Saudi, Bahrain, etc. The government should be making this a priority issue.
- Raheem
--- On Mon, 8/4/08, Kajimel Raisuddin <Kraisuddin@hotmail.com> wrote:
From: Kajimel Raisuddin <Kraisuddin@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: [ALOCHONA] Kuwait - Nurul Kabir said it all
To: alochona@yahoogroups.com
Date: Monday, August 4, 2008, 9:00 PM
Just not kuwait, all arab countries are alike. Arabs made transition from donkey to mercedez. All guest workers, except white skins, are miskin to them. In the world history, arabs introduced the slavery in the world. Arabs gangs would go to Africa and catch people like bird hunting, wpould bring back to european slave traders to send ultimatelu to America and other countries. Nonme of the arab originated riligions prohibited slavery, rather it was readily introduced in the society. In the name of battle or war they would go to weaker neighborhoods, catch all men to make slaves, and delcare all women, children and wealth as "Gonimoth". Women, children and wealth would distributed among the members of the raiders. That blood still flows in the vein of all arabs. Today they treat the non-white foreign workers as their slaves, buying thousands of women through gang-ship, from poor countries like Bangladesh, to use in their HARAMS. Arab Camel Juckeys are steeling smaller children through gangs, from the poor countries, and using as sex tools. And on the other hand, spending enormous money, by sects like Wahabbis, in less fortunate muslim countries, like Bangladesh, to Mosques, Madrasas, and to extremists, with a view to spreading their extremism. They are only fortunate because they have oil. Otherwise, from humanitarian viewpoint, they are still like animals. What we can expect from them?
To: alochona@yahoogroups.com From: haquetm83@yahoo.com Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 22:18:32 -0700 Subject: [ALOCHONA] Kuwait - Nurul Kabir said it all | New Age Edirorial Editorial
Criminal indifference (4.08.08) The photograph front-paged in New Age on Sunday, of a Bangladeshi worker deported from Kuwait showing the marks of injury that he sustained in police action and torture by his employers, reveals more than the despair and desperation of an individual. It exposes the feudalistic mindset of the Kuwaiti society where, seemingly, the relationship between the employers and the employees is not based on mutual recognition and respect but defined by domination – physical and financial – of the former over the latter. It also bears testimony to the military-controlled interim government's failure to stand by our overseas workers and to stand up against the violation of their rights as migrant workers by their Kuwaiti employers and as human beings by the Kuwaiti authorities.
The series of events that unfolded over the past week should leave no doubt in anyone's minds that the Bangladeshi workers have been doubly denied – first by their Kuwaiti employers and then by the Kuwaiti authorities. It is also obvious that the workers took to the street on valid grounds. That their demand for higher pay and improved working condition was justified has been amply proved by the Kuwaiti government's subsequent decision that the private sector has to increase the minimum wage for workers to 40 Kuwaiti dinars per month and foot their insurance, housing and health expenditures. Deplorably, however, the Kuwaiti security and law-enforcement authorities came down hard on the workers for taking to the street, picking them up from their residence, torturing them and bundling them into homebound planes.
The harsh treatment meted to the protesting workers suggest that the Kuwaiti authorities are yet to graduate from their medieval mentality, into recognising the migrant workers as partners in development, not paid-up slaves, so to speak, and that they have little regard for the international conventions that guarantees migrant workers protection from any forms of discrimination and rights violation. Perhaps they forget the fact that the modern Kuwait they so eagerly showcase to the rest of the world has been built on the blood and sweat of the migrant workers, especially from the South Asian countries.
What is even more deplorable is the utmost indifference and, needless to say, ineptitude with which the interim government of Bangladesh has handled the issue thus far. Over and over, the incumbents have displayed what may be called its inherent apathy, if not antipathy, to the working class. For example, one of the first few things that it did upon its assumption of office was to remove makeshift shops from pavements and roadsides in the capital, thereby making thousands of people jobless overnight. Thus, when the foreign secretary issued a veiled threat to the workers in the wake of their demonstrations in Kuwait, we were outraged but not surprised.
It is common knowledge that our workers get no redress for the exploitation they are subjected to in many countries because of the government's and the overseas missions' failure to protect their rights. In this case as well, the government has hardly taken any effective step to ensure that the deported workers, who number almost 500 by now, are adequately compensated. Such indifference borders on the criminal.
The government should, therefore, immediately demand of the Kuwaiti authorities for compensation for the deported workers. It should also take up the issue with the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations, as, evidently, the rights of the deported workers were violated on more counts than one. Besides, it should move for a resolution by the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation denouncing the incident; after all, not only Bangladeshis but workers from other South Asian countries have also been subjected to deprivation and denial of rights in Kuwait. As both Bangladesh and Kuwait are members of the Organisation of Islamic Conferences, the incumbents should also lodge a complaint with the OIC.
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