THE SPECIAL VULNERABILITY OF FOREIGN WORKERS
Foreign workers typically enter Saudi Arabia under the sponsorship (kafala) of a Saudi employer and are thus subject to significant restrictions on their freedom of movement, "giving rise to conditions that might involve forced labor," according to the U.S. Department of State.4 Sponsored employees cannot legally leave the country, travel outside the city of their employment, or change jobs without obtaining the written permission of theirsponsors.5 Employers often confiscate workers' passports as well, leaving them subject to arrest as undocumented aliens.
Taken together, these practices make it easy for unscrupulous employers to pressure their employees to relinquish their legitimate claims for compensation or to submit to labor conditions other than those specified in their contracts.6 The 1996 U.S. Department of State report on Saudi Arabia states that
[t]here have been many reports of workers whose employers have refused to pay several months, or even years, of accumulated salary or other promised benefits . . . . The labor system abets the exploitation of foreign workers because enforcement of work contracts is difficult and generally favors Saudi employers. Labor cases can take many months to reach a final appellate ruling, during which time the employer can prevent the foreign laborer from leaving the country; alternatively, an employer can delay a case until a worker's funds are exhausted and the worker is forced to return to his home country.7
The Asia-Pacific Mission for Migrant Filipinos (APMMF) reported in August 1997 that more than one hundred Filipino citizens stranded in Riyadh without exit visas had staged a sit-in at the Philippine Labor Compound in Riyadh to protest the Philippine government's failure to aid in their repatriation. According to APMMF, there are approximately 500 stranded workers in Riyadh alone. "Most of them have grievances lodged at the Saudi Court against their employers or sponsors for contract violations such as non-payment of wages, long hours of work, poor working and living conditions, sexual and physical abuses. Others become stranded after they were forsaken by their sponsors and `run away' (sic) from their employers."8
Workers who resist such abuses can be subject to deportation or trial on unrelated spurious charges;9 individuals awaiting deportation often spend long periods of time in substandard deportation facilities awaiting processing of the required paperwork. While in custody these individuals may be subject to ill-treatment, includingface slapping and beatings on the soles of the feet (falaqa), at the behest of the employer.10 In some cases torture or the threat of torture has been used to extract confessions. Foreigners who have been arrested will often be deported, regardless of the outcome of their trial, and thus be unable to claim any back pay or other benefits stipulated in their contracts. Foreigners found guilty of crimes often receive harsher sentences than do citizens, both because of de facto discrimination against foreigners and because Saudi law favors Muslims over non-Muslims in many kinds of legal disputes, and only Muslims are allowed to become citizens.11
4 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, February 1997), p. 1375. 5 See for example Council of Ministers Resolution No. 826 of 1975, Rules for the Regulation of the Labor Force Movement, which prohibits workers from changing sponsors unless the original sponsor agrees to the transfer. In cases where a worker's contract with one sponsor has terminated and the worker does not agree to its renewal, that sponsor can still prohibit the worker from obtaining work with another sponsor; in such instances the worker is repatriated for at least one year (at least three years if "trade secrets" are involved). A worker who violates these rules is automatically deported. An English translation of Resolution No. 826 appears in Alison Lerrick and Q. Javed Mian, Saudi Business and Labor Law: Its Interpretation and Application 2nd Ed. (London: Graham & Trotman, 1987), Appendix 46, pp. 546-47. 6 In theory Saudi Arabia's Labor Commission provides foreign and local workers with a neutral agency to adjudicate and arbitrate labor disputes. In reality a large segment of the working population -- domestic or household workers -- is excluded from the Commission's jurisdiction. Commission offices are often difficult to reach and successfully pursuing a complaint may require several visits, a costly and dangerous proposition for workers not in possession of a passport who must travel to an office in another city. For a detailed description of the functioning of the Commission and case examples, see Lerrick and Mian, Saudi Business and Labor Law, pp. 305-29. 7 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996, p. 1375. 8 Quoted in Asian Human Rights Commission (ahrchk@HK.Super.Net), "Stranded Workers in Saudi Arabia," E-mail to Asia Human Rights Alert Mailing List, August 22, 1997. 9 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996, p. 1371. 10 Human Rights Watch/Middle East telephone interview, a lawyer practicing in Saudi Arabia, name withheld on request, August 1997. See also U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996, p. 1369. 11 U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1996, p. 1369.