“I do not fight them any more because if I do not let them have sex with me, they beat me and take away my food,” said Sapna, a Bangladeshi housemaid in Saudi Arabia. Sapna (not real name), like several other Bangladeshi female workers in the kingdom, said she faced physical, mental and sexual abuse in Saudi Arabia by her employers and their friends and relatives. “I do what I have to for self-preservation, so I do not protest my abuse,” Sapna told the Dhaka Tribune.

Bangladesh had suspended sending women workers to Saudi Arabia for seven years after reports of serious abuses. However, the country signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the kingdom in 2015 ending the freeze after which there was a surge in the number women going to the Gulf country. About 43,000 women travelled to Saudi Arabia for work in the first four months of the year, taking the total number of Bangladeshi women workers in the kingdom to 62,000. Saudi Arabia is estimated to have 1.3 million Bangladeshi workers in the country.

Most of these women, who went to Saudi Arabia to work as housemaids or to take care of the elderly or children, feel helpless when they are abused by their employers. Local reports, quoting Bangladesh’s Labour Councillor in Riyadh Sarwar Alam, say at least 22 Bangladeshi women have died in Saudi Arabia till May this year, with some of them committing suicide. About 1,500 have returned home with the government’s help and 500 or more have taken shelter in the embassy in Riyadh and the consulate in Jeddah.

The allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation had earlier prompted the Philippines, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Nepal to tighten their laws. When contacted, a number of former diplomats who worked in the Gulf told The Hindu that the current MoU for manpower exports to Saudi Arabia does not have protective clauses for the safety and rights of women workers, who are mostly uneducated and poor. Anwar Ul Alam, a former diplomat, said migrant female domestic workers live like slaves in Saudi Arabia with no right to go outside their employers’ home.

Some of the workers are not even paid the promised salary as the middlemen take a cut. Many workers, like Sapna, continue to cling on to their jobs despite the abuses because of poverty at home. But for those who want to leave Saudi Arabia, returning home is not easy. In line with the rules, the Saudi government has to be informed by the employers if any worker flees, and it takes time and paperwork for the embassy to send them back to Bangladesh.

False promises

Studies reveal that recruiting agencies lure unskilled women from Bangladesh by promising high-paying jobs. Once they get in, they realise how different the situation is, a Bangladesh official, who worked in the country’s embassy in Riyadh, said. “But they are unable to go back home because their employers confiscate their passports and they have no idea how to reach the embassy.” Asked by reporters on the situation from Dhaka, Bangladesh’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Golam Moshi, said: “As soon as we are made aware of such an issue, we take action.” When contacted, the Saudi embassy in Dhaka told The Hindu that there’s no one at the embassy to respond to media queries.

The women workers “are helpless and do not have legal protection,” said Rosaline D. Costa, a Dhaka-based rights activist. “They [women workers] are facing cruelties in Saudi Arabia and this has to be ended,” said Mizanur Rahman, former Chairman of the Bangladesh National Human Rights Commission.

Haroon Habib writes for The Hindu and is based in Dhaka.