Progress?

Only from afar.

Here are some facts that will make you think twice before celebrating these “achievements” -

[Burj Khalifa's] workers continuously protested against the poor working conditions and low pay, despite the fact that strikes and unionizing are illegal according to UAE law. In 2004, thousands of workers protested before the Ministry of Labour, only to be dispersed by police and threatened with mass deportations. Sporadic protests continued in 2005, with the largest labor protest in the history of the UAE in September 2005, when 7,000 workers staged a three-hour protest. In March 2006, 2,500 workers rioted at the Burj Khalifa site, demanding a raise in their pay. In response to this, protesters were once again threatened with mass deportation. In November 2007, workers at the Burj Khalifa site held a strike again, demanding better living conditions and pay. [Source]

This isn’t any different from what workers typically experience in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.

Life in the day of a construction worker in Bahrain:

Nearly 400 workers employed in the company in charge of building the Isa Town flyover have gone unpaid for the last three months. [Source]

Not long ago, 300 migrant workers went on strike demanding higher wages, only to be punished by the company that employed them.

Workers find similarly oppressive situations in Qatar as well -

The workers’ strike was over a decrease in the workers’ salary from 1000 Qatari riyals ($275) to 650 riyals ($180) per month. The workers were kept in jail without food for days and later deported. To add insult to injury, laborers who worked less than two years for the company had to pay for their ticket back home. [Source]

Despite this being a violation of Qatar’s own labor laws, these workers have yet to see justice from the government. The country is often celebrated in the international media for being a model for moderation and progress, though it’s actually one of the most racist places in the region.

Bahrain is also full of corrupt government and corporate officials who consistently violate migrant worker rights. As one example of many, 128 Indian workers who were promised salaries of BD 100 ($270) per month stopped working after they were instead given only BD 45 ($120) and were unable to survive on such a salary. The consequence? A travel ban and outrageous fees, forcing them to borrow money from friends for months in order to survive. Although this sounds like an “extreme” situation, this story is actually the norm, and the exploitative conditions result in suicides throughout the country’s labor camps.

Can we accept that the people who built this:

Live here?

These stories are endless. Unfortunately, so is the ambition of Gulf states at the expense of these workers, most of whom remain defenseless and defeated. One tower after the other. Competitive malls. Luxury resorts. Fancy museums, all of which cater to the elite of the country and produce an image of unmatched wealth and prosperity. This all continues at an impeccable rate despite ongoing protests.

Our countries are not in a race to be the best at anything in this world, but they are in a race with themselves.

Whoever builds the fastest and largest shrine to their wealth and glory, will also be the one who would have built their own shrine… of slavery.

This mindless drivel, as offensive as it is, is unfortunately the norm in Gulf states. It’s very common to have maids in households and it’s even more common to witness the discrimination and racist slurs being spewed from people as a reference to their maids. Unfortunately, it’s even become common for maids to resort to suicide as a result of this abusive bigotry.

The whole forum is populated with quite a few messages amplifying racist discrimination. It’s also what you typically hear on the streets. This mentality is further amplified by our media outlets.

It therefore kills me to read things like this and watching it slip by as simply “yet another” example of the general idiocy that come with “sponsoring” a maid today:

This lady thinks it’s a nightmare that she employed a maid and then a pair of diamond earrings magically went missing. She admits herself that there’s no proof of any wrongdoing on the maid’s part, but she proceeded to “cancel” the maid anyways. “Cancel” and “buy” are words that often replace “employ” as these individuals are viewed as nothing more than a cheap vacuum cleaner that you need to beat up whenever it stops working. Something goes missing? The vacuum cleaner probably sucked it up.

The problem is that this is not a case of a “few bad apples.” This is the norm. You can walk into an apartment complex and listen from several floors higher a woman or man violently lashing out at a maid for not working faster, for leaving the house, for not taking out the trash on time, for not “moving her ass.”

Our governments have developed and implemented policies such as the sponsorship system that welcomes this behavior. In fact, our government officials actively participate in this racist abuse.

The answer?

Call them out. Shame is a big factor in our societies and we need to highlight that this is shameful behavior and a human rights violation to treat people in this humiliating fashion. Just like sexual harassment campaigns, especially if you consider the fact that many of these maids are commonly sexually harassed on a daily basis. Abolishing the sponsorship system would be a step forward, but it wouldn’t make as big of a difference if the general perception of maids isn’t routinely challenged.

You lost your diamond earrings? Sorry about that. In what planet do you live in if that’s your “nightmare”? Try leaving your family, working for complete strangers, risk being sold into slavery and/or forced prostitution, risk death, your health, your sanity. Try living under these squalid conditions. For years. Come back and talk about your nightmares then. In the meantime, it’s about time you pop the bubble you live in and see the people around you for who they really are: human beings.

I’m not saying we should provide a one-sided view about maids in the Gulf. Complaints will exist and some are legitimate. However, journalists, columnists, bloggers and editors need to be extremely alert and cautious about how they are framing these issues. Maids lack a lot of legal rights in our countries, thanks in part to the sponsorship system which leaves them completely vulnerable to abuse, but they also suffer from a considerable amount of racist discrimination throughout our societies. Look no further than an average mall or an airport anywhere from Doha to Manama to witness the despicable treatment of South Asian workers. It’s common enough that it’s impossible to deny.

We need to highlight our outrage to these editors who don’t know any better than to publish this propaganda that seemingly encourage racism and normalizes classism. Why push for the idea that maids are “pampered” when they have incredibly demanding jobs under little to no protection? Why complain about the expenses involved in hiring a maid when they get the least amount of compensation which amount to nothing in comparison to the average salary in the Gulf? And more importantly, why amplify these self-absorbed voices instead of the voices of victims and their families that are barely recognized? Thousands of families are still demanding justice for their siblings, mothers, fathers, sons or daughters who have disappeared without trace upon arriving to our countries. They are forgotten and dismissed.

In a previous article I took similar issue with one of the other pieces published by this same paper. Sadly other local papers appear to have been inspired to be following a similar trend. This is a grave problem.

For a publication called Emirates 24/7 the editors should consider creating a section to discuss the “24/7 workers” who work insane hours on a daily basis to provide for complete strangers, sometimes under deplorable conditions. They spend years doing this. Some don’t come out of it alive. Some take their own lives. Some patiently go through each day despite not having their salaries paid on time or in full. Some get beaten to death. Some get raped.

This isn’t to generalize and claim that all domestic workers go through these issues, but they do happen in such frequency that we should be alarmed and informed enough to take action. We should never dismiss these as the “few” cases – there’s enough of these cases that makes this OUR problem. Every single week for an entire year there’s one story after another about these incidents and yet the outcry remains largely invisible particularly in these media outlets, who instead publish these horrid stories about maids being “pampered.”

So I have a few questions for Shuchita Kapur, one of the authors of such offensive and unnecessary op-ed pieces. You think it’s tough having to “pamper” a maid? Having to provide for her the way she gave up years of her life to provide for you? Having to grant this individual who catered to your every need a decent request? Go through one day as a maid and I assure you, you will never complain again. I’m confident it will change the tone of your stories when you realize the challenges and physical/psychological pressures involved in the job. When you are turned away from public spaces, mocked, dismissed, and harassed because the entire community around you deems you so pitiful to the point of worthlessness. When the idea of reuniting with your family is a distant dream that may or may never happen depending on nothing but pure “luck” because your protection is never guaranteed.

Shuchita, I doubt you have the strength required to endure this pain.

It might appear from the influx of tragic stories that these maids are weak and helpless. Make no mistake in assuming that. Most have the inspiring courage, determination, and patience necessary to survive decades of abuse, imprisoned in a household where they are taken advantage of, mistreated and never appreciated, all the while missing out on watching their own families grow. How many of us can go through that?

It’s time for us to urgently take a stance against trivializing abuse of migrant workers in the media.

It therefore baffles me how little consideration they have for those individuals who need to be protected online especially if they use the internet as a resource to engage in risky (but necessary) activities. Anything from discouraging anonymity on the likes of Facebook and Google+ to requiring legit photos on sites like LinkedIn, not realizing that some of us live in areas where human rights advocacy is not just frowned upon but severely punishable by our governments. Anything you do to protect yourself – these companies consider to be against their “user agreement” forcing you to reveal sensitive information, making this field 10 times more dangerous just so these companies can be more “relevant” and therefore profitable. The problem is that we can’t just simply quit these services. We need them as tools to empower our work.

Every other week I’d get an email from an internet service stating that my account has been deleted or disabled.

Why? “You’re not using a real photo.” No, I use an avatar, which they deleted, and then another avatar, which they also deleted, and attempted to keep it empty, which they didn’t allow, and then finally resorted to just having a logo – but uh oh! Disabled again. This is despite my several attempts at communicating this to customer service reps at these companies. They couldn’t care less. Regardless of what their CEOs say at tech conferences. Irrelevant. They do not abide by these values when it comes to managing their companies and reviewing their user agreements and privacy policies. Do we matter?

Despite all that is being said about the future of the internet, and how great and open it’s going to be specifically in light of the SOPA debates, this remains to be a huge issue. We talk about censorship but we don’t expose the double standards of some of these online companies. Sure we can simply stop using their services – it’s theirs and they can do whatever they want to their terms of agreement (which to be fair we had to agree on before signing up on the site), but it’s still alienating, it’s still dangerous and the more and more companies that adopt these policies the more we risk losing in this struggle against censorship and surveillance.

I want internet companies to realize that they’re not doing their service a favor by alienating many of us who prefer to keep ourselves protected. There is certain information that we really prefer to simply not share. It’s not because we’re stubborn. It’s because not all of us are courageous enough to share every aspect of our lives, checking in from every location, uploading every photo, revealing our physical addresses or phone numbers. Some of us have a lot of reason to be scared shitless of the likelihood of being an easier target by ruthless regimes and armed groups if we did share all of these bits and pieces that these services require.

We’re not asking you to recreate your products to be more fitting for our needs. We’re not asking you to make your products more tempting for spambots and potentially abusive users.

We’re asking you to be considerate.

We’re asking you to make an exception.

For some of us out there, our lives literally depend on these little exceptions.

Respect our privacy if you want users to be loyal to your service. After all, you need us to keep churning up those big checks, don’t you? And we could also your help in staying connected without having to magnify the risks involved in our sensitive online activities.

Please don’t ban me from every service you produce simply for wanting to stay safe.

We’re happy to say that since last week it’s been available as an iPhone application as well, which you can download here. Screenshots below:

- Completely revamped web application
- Better navigation
- Ability to easily view, share, add and explore bands
- New player
- Ability to create your own personal collection of favorite tracks
- Ability to receive suggestions for other bands based on your favorite tracks
- An iPhone application that syncs with your collection
… And more!

We think the site speaks for itself – so please head over there and check it out! http://mideastunes.com

Our mission is to bridge barriers of faith and geography to unite young people committed to fostering constructive discourse in the Middle East through music. The core of the project manifested from our desire to promote bands and musicians that would otherwise never be given a second glance in the international scene. We feel that is because most people would never think to look to regions like the Middle East and North Africa for highly thought provoking music. The need to change this is our driving force. We believe music can change the world and that the musicians of the Middle East and North Africa will lead the way.

Founded in 2010, the site has expanded to serve as a primary resource for discovering up and coming Middle Eastern talents. We’re proud of our quick progress and awaiting to unveil amazing new parternships ahead!

In the meantime, enjoy the tunes and discover the very best of the underground music scene brimming from our region: http://mideastunes.com

2011 was a big year for our projects. We moved to healthier servers, we rebuilt, redesigned and grew many of our websites, and we had the support of many volunteers who helped us take these initiatives to new levels.

Here’s a very brief overview and highlights of what we did:

We redesigned and rebuilt CrowdVoice.org, a user-powered service that tracks voices of protest from around the world by crowdsourcing data:

Screenshot of a CrowdVoice page

Screenshot of a CrowdVoice feature

CrowdVoice is a winner of the Citizen Media competition from Ashoka & Google (click here for the press release.) CrowdVoice was also selected by INC Magazine as one of the Top 5 projects to watch out for from the TED community and by Fast Company as one of the 5 projects worthy of the Google journalism prize.

We redesigned and rebuilt Mideast Tunes, a platform to showcase underground musicians from the Middle East and North Africa who use music as a tool for social change (see yet another updated version of this site a bit further down in this list – this one was temporary while the other was in development) -

Mideast Tunes

Our Migrant Rights site won a BOBs award for “Best Human Rights Blog” -

Our ‘Voices for Gaza’ video a runner-up at the 2011 New Works Contest:

We launched Ahwaa.org, a bilingual tool for LGBT youth in the Middle East that leverages game mechanics to facilitate high quality interactions.

Ahwaa.org homepage

Here is some coverage of the site:
Interview at Change Observer
LA Times
Read Write Web
The Atlantic
Gulf Daily News
CNN Arabic

We redesigned KurdishRights.org:

Homepage of the Alliance for Kurdish Rights

We launched AssyrianRights.org, which attempts to raise awareness about the persecution of Assyrians in the Middle East.

We released the following videos:

We relaunched Mideast Tunes:

There’s a lot more that we haven’t mentioned, and we have much more in storage for 2012. In the meantime please check out our list of ongoing projects here. If you support what we do, please consider taking our work further with your donation. We could use all the help we can get!

And yet it’s deeply disturbing that racism and discrimination in some Gulf papers do not raise any red flags amongst its editors. Some even get away with portraying maids as killers without much of an outcry. Is it because it has become common knowledge?

Inserting “Kuwait maid” on a Google search results in a viral video titled “Maid Stealing from wallet (Kuwait). BEWARE!!” – it has been viewed almost half a million times. Emirates 24/7 recently published this piece, titled: Five signs to spot a maid about to abscond.

The five signs? Your maid acting like a perfectly normal human being:

1) What if the maid is using a mobile phone? Perhaps to connect with the family that she is deprived from seeing or having any other form of communication with. For years. But wait, no! Can’t be. She is most likely conspiring with others to run away and leave you to clean your own damned dishes. “BEWARE!!”

2) Is your maid going outside? Maybe for some fresh air? Unbelievable! She needs air? Fuck off!

3) Your maid is sick? No. YOU’RE sick. For believing that she’s sick. She can’t be. She’s a maid. She needs to work. No sick days off. Get it done. Not gonna pay it min-wage for nothing. What’s the worst that can happen? She dies? Order another of her kind.

4) Buying travel bags. Or any kind of bags. Or food or water or any other necessities. Buying anything. Everything she needs is available. She really doesn’t need much. Just a uniform and like, a banana or something.

5) Meeting old and new friends during her weekly holiday. Oh wait, WHAT HOLIDAY? Who is she meeting? They’re conspiring to steal the house. The cars. Maybe even the husband? No way! Lock her in the room. Maids only need one friend. It’s called a broom.

In all seriousness, why should these be signs for anything other than having certain rights that can amount to a somewhat better life. None of these signs are anything short of completely reasonable.

It’s clear that the authorities do not take it seriously when a worker is killed or investigates causes of suicide, which persist at alarming rates. But a worker commits a crime and it’s frontpage material – meetings are immediately held to discuss collective punishments, often resulting in racist generalizations and further discriminatory policies that punishes not just the the worker who commits the crime but all other maids from that particular country or maids in general. As an example, look no further than this case.

Of course some maids commit crimes. That’s terrible. However, it’s not right to deny that the ratio is far less in comparison to the maids who return to their countries with their bodies completely disfigured beyond recognition – or the number of maids who don’t make it out of our countries alive.

Really, who needs to send the warnings to whom? Who really needs to “BEWARE!!”?

There are many steps to be taken to prevent this endless cycle of migrant rights violations – but amongst the first steps is to stop trivializing abuse and recognizing the simple fact that maids have human needs that must be respected and protected as well.

We’re proud to say that because of YOUR SUPPORT, it was announced yesterday that CrowdVoice has indeed secured its spot with three other winners at the competition. According to Ashoka, “The winners are breakthrough innovations that boost media access and participation around the world.” The competition is supported by Google and includes $5,000 which we will use to further advance CrowdVoice.org to its next phase of development.

Thank you for making this possible for us!

Tragically, the site is still censored here in Bahrain. That won’t stop us form building and innovating.