Enslaved in the Kingdom

Bangladeshi female workers continue to come home from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with harrowing tales of modern slavery.

Gruesome experiences of rape, physical abuse, forced labour and bondage in that country will haunt these women for the rest of their lives.     

Rozina (not her real name) is one of four such exploited women who returned home from the KSA last month. Rozina and two other women were brought back together on August 25.

The foreign ministry brought the three women back after Ain o Salish Kendra (ASK) came to learn about their plight and drew the ministry's attention. 

Rozina had decided to take on the job of a household worker in the KSA as her husband, a betel nut seller in Dohar of Dhaka, cannot provide for the family.

The family is in urgent need of a large amount of money for their seven-year-old son's cleft palate surgery.

The educational expense of their eighth-grader daughter is also creating an extra pressure on the low-income family. 

In pursuit of a better future for the family, the 27-year-old mother, Rozina, risked all and boarded a plane to Saudi Arabia in January this year.

“I was first sent to a house in Dammam. After working there for a month, I requested the madam [the housewife] to pay my salary. But she said that she would pay me by the end of the second month,” Rozina told The Daily Star during an interview on August 28.

As she badly needed to send the money home, she did not agree with her employer's offer and argued strongly for immediate payment of her salary. 

Her argument infuriated the employer and she was sent back to the office of the employment agency in the city with one month's salary. 

For the next 15 days she was confined to the house of the agency owner's relative before being “sold” to a broker.

The broker, a Saudi man, took Rozina to his house in the city of Hafar Al-Batin.

There she was forced to do household work without any commitment of payment.

“They didn't even care to give me food or water. Starved, I had to drink [unsafe] water from the bathroom,” Rozina said trying in vain to hold back her tears.

After she was allowed to go outside for making a phone call back home, Rozina escaped and reported the Saudi man's abuse to the nearby police station.

Instead of taking any action against the broker, the police handed her over to him.

After regaining control over her, the broker became ruthless, she said, adding, “Whenever I requested him to send me back home, he beat me mercilessly and threatened me with my life.”

Unable to bear the torture, Rozina escaped for the second time when she went out of the house to throw out garbage.

She again reached out to the police to complain about the Saudi's abuse. But the police returned her to the same man without reprimanding him. 

Over the next six months the man continued to force Rozina into work in at least six different houses -- sometimes for seven days and sometimes for a month, Rozina said.

During this time she was not paid a single penny, she alleged. 

Desperately seeking a way out, Rozina approached another Saudi man and described her ordeal to him. The man helped her go the police station in Hafar Al-Batin to file a complaint again.

The police this time kept her in their custody for 15 days, she said.

To her disbelief, for the third time, the police took the broker's side and physically assaulted her before handing her over to the broker.

“I blacked out after the police slapped me on my right cheek five times and four times on the left,” Rozina said crying.

After picking her up from the police custody, the broker sent Rozina to the employment agency's office in the city of Dammam. She was kept in captivity there for 10 days with two other Bangladeshi women.

The other two women had been enduring similar abuse of bondage and forced labour, she said. 

Ain o Salish Kendra found out about the plight of the three women after one of them secretly contacted her family back home in  Bangladesh, using messenger application Imo on her cellphone. 

Sheepa Hafiza, executive director of ASK, said after learning about the abused women, ASK wrote to the foreign ministry requesting to bring back the three women including Rozina.

In less than a month's time, with the latest return of the three on August 25, a total of four women came home from the KSA after undergoing similar horrific abuse.  

Returned home with only a month's salary (1,000 Saudi Riyal), battered and exploited Rozina now does not know how she will pull herself together, let alone her family. 

She lost the last seven months from her life and now she has to start afresh to earn enough for her son's surgery and daughter's schooling, Rozina said sobbing.    

“My daughter had to stop going to school as we couldn't pay her tuition...,” she could not finish her sentence.