African migrant workers’ rights figure low on agenda for arrogant Saudis: Analyst

African migrant workers's rights figure very low on agenda for arrogant Saudis, says a political analyst, referring to the genocide of African workers in the Arab kingdom. 

Zaakir Ahmed Mayet made the remarks in an interview with Press TV on Sunday after footage revealing the massacre of African migrants from Ethiopia by Saudi regime troops was released earlier this month. 

The footage showed a mass grave containing dozens of African workers killed by Saudi border guards. Ethiopian migrants confirmed to the al-Masirah Yemeni news channel that the Saudi border guards kill about five migrants at the border every day and injure many more.

“About 80 percent of the workers (working) in the private sector in Saudi Arabia are foreign nationals and foreign immigrants,” Ahmed said. 

“These individuals work longer than 12 hours a day, they have unpaid salaries and they continue to be subjects of sexual violence as well as rape by individuals [who] call themselves responsible bosses and employers within Saudi Arabia.”

The Saudi regime is turning to a "Satanic state", therefore workers’ rights figure very low on the agenda of anything in terms of justice, he added.

Despite being among the most wealthiest of countries, Saudi Arabia has a horrible human rights record, accused of detaining thousands of African migrants and treating them in extremely inhumane and dreadful manner.

Ahmed said the "arrogant Saudi regime" believes that the wealth gives it the right to do as it pleases, when it pleases and to whom it pleases.

He added that since African migrant workers are completely reliant on the work that is being provided by Saudi Arabia, they are viewed as sub-humans and treated with a degree of racism and contempt.

Saudis believe “just because [migrants] have darker skin and are from different regions they are of a lesser nature than a normal human being and they do not have the right to dignity and respect,” he said.

‘African migrants treated like slaves’

During the era of slavery in the America, some enslaved people were set free after paying the masters who had bought them the shipping and purchase fee.

Today, migrant domestic workers in Saudi Arabia are employed on similar terms and they can earn freedom only if they pay their employers hefty amount calculated as the agency recruitment fee, visa fee, and air ticket.

The Saudi Kafala sponsor system, that defines the relationship between foreign workers and their local sponsors, has been described as modern slavery.This points to the fact that the abuse of migrant workers from Africa amounts to official policy.

Ahmed likened the Kafala system and the “extreme right abuse” to Israeli conduct in the besieged Gaza Strip where the Zionist regime has prohibited certain number of people from leaving their localities because of the regime's arbitrary policy.

Champions of human rights ignore Saudis atrocities

Western powers have a long history of ignoring heinous crimes and human rights violations in Saudi Arabia due to high dependence on oil and billions of dollars’ worth of arm sales to the kingdom.

Joe Biden administration recently granted Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman legal immunity in Jamal Khashoggi murder case, which angered many even within the ruling establishment in Washington.

Since 1945, Ahmed stated, it is the United States that has been keeping this atrocious regime in power.

The deal was security for oil. The United States would provide armaments, troops and support within the region and the Saudi regime would provide oil, therefore the United States became subservient to the Saudi regime and turned a blind eye to its atrocities.

US complicit in slavery in Persian Gulf

According to an investigation by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), at least four US military bases in the Persian Gulf are trapped in their jobs by abusive employment practices that they say prevent them from returning home or even looking for better work in the region.

Current and former workers interviewed by ICIJ are among the armies of men and women from Asia and Africa who do the manual and semi-skilled labor that keeps US military bases abroad running day after day.

Migrant workers complaining about mistreatment are taken to detention centers where some eventually die.

The US military operates from more than a dozen bases and other installations in the Persian Gulf and neighboring Iraq and has used these locations to wage wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

International call to end racism

“There has to be an international call and an international effort to end this kind of exploitation so that people who cannot make a living in their own countries are not treated so badly when they travel abroad,” Margaret Kimberly, the co-founder of the Black Agenda Report, told Press TV.

'You're talking about a country [Saudi Arabia] that is not a democracy that deprives its own citizens of rights, that executes people for very minor offenses, a country that does not have a true Justice system so the end result of all of that would be anti-black racism.

“There has to be a concerted effort to fight against the racism which created these conditions,” she added.

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