Now, now , howdare anyonme suspect mischeif is afoot in this all too pristine vindication of justice being done...
/Sarc off

Posted by: voletti at May 8, 2005 9:07 AM

Saudis and Justice??
These words wouldnt gell in the same sentence. Here's one story about their justice system which was told to me by an Indian Expatriate living in KSA. In 1992 as 12 yr old drunk Saudi kid took his dad's Chevrolet on a joyride... He lost control of his vehicle while driving through an Indian compund and rammed into a bustop killing a 9 month old Indian boy and paralysing his father. On huge protests from Indian expats, Saudi authorities started judicial proceedings, but the Indian family was pressuriezed by the drunk brat's family to withdraw the charges, that paralysed guy was uncereminously dismissed from his job without benifits, mutawas (the religious police) arrested hi wife on charges of Religious Blasphemy, ultimately the family gave in to the pressure and withdrew the charges. Last heard that Saudi Boy was pursuing MS in Lamar University,Texas.

Posted by: FuckMuslims at May 8, 2005 9:58 AM

Two very different stories in The New Duranty Times today. One is about the wall-to-wall mall, otherwise known as Dubai, and its gold souk, sickening-luxury hotels, and everything else that is the worst of the West. So who says the Arabs reject modernity? Not at all. They want all the decadence and boredom they can get, thanks to the oil money. Perhaps some of those so sated, and satiated, will turn to -- well, if you are a bored Muslim, or one offended, perhaps even after having indulged in it yourself, in the Alicia-Silverstone-goes-to-Araby life, how would you express your post-shopping revulsion, that post-coitum-omne-animal-triste or rather post-bargain-omne-animal-triste realization that this isn't it at all, not at all? Perhaps you turn to the Old Ways and True. Unfortunately for the rest of us, those Old Ways and True turn out to be Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira. And we all know what that means.

The second story, the one most relevant to the torture-story-retracted-under-threat-of-more-torture-or-worse printed above, also appears in today's New Duranty Times. It is a story about Sri Lankan "guest workers" and their treatment in the Arab states where they are routinely beaten (so routinely that the preparatory course for such would-be maids is to explain that if they do not do thus and so they will be beaten), raped, tortured, and murdered (about 100 bodies are returned, without explanation, each year, just to Sri Lanka). Of course, just as the American government and the major oil companies that made up ARAMCO for decades promoted Saudi Arabia as our "staunch ally" full of noble Bedouin, hawk on hand, weather-beaten leathery faces, the enchantment of the desert sky, the hospitality of those rough-hewn nobles, and just as the European elites, on the take (think Jacques Chirac), including businessmen who make so much of their money from rich Arabs -- estate agents, owners of gambling establishments, the high-end madams, arms salesmen and their middlemen, and indeed any businesses wishing to recycle petro-dollars, so do the poorer countries in Asia wish to do nothing to offend those who, though they cheat and mistreat their domestic slaves (slavery is an intimiate part of Islam, and always has been -- it was officially ended only in 1962 in Saudi Arabia, but unofficially it continues in at least 3 or 4, if not more, of the Arab League's member states).

The fabulous unearned wealth of Dubai (one Westerner who spent years in Saudi Arabia building military cities summed the Arab Gulf states up thus: "Money can buy everything -- except civilization." And in the same paper, the same day, the story of the domestic slaves sent just from tiny Sri Lanka.

A good juxtaposition. Something to keep in mind.

Posted by: Hugh at May 8, 2005 10:09 AM

Here in Florida, a home away from home for Saudi kleptocrats, one Saudi princess used to habitually beat her maid. I believe the princess was finally charged and convicted when she pushed her help down the stairs (or something).

Saudi Arabia is valuable from a historical standpoint. Where else can you see medieval culture in its natural state? Sure they have western technology, but that won't survive 'their' oil resources.

Posted by: Beagle at May 8, 2005 10:28 AM

About Dubai:-

-They pay off terrorists to keep them from attacking inside the country.
-Racism is rampant on an economic and social level. Heck even the taxi drivers do it.
-Crime is covered up. Unless you are present at the scene you will never learn about it from the papers. That is if the criminal is a well connected muslim, and the victim a kaffir. Kaffir's that commit crime can also escape if they produce the $$$. Money the great equalizer. Even corporate misdoings are covered up and statistics altered. They even cover up real weather temperatures.
-Major businessmen located here are linked to 'dark side' of the current war the US is engaged in.
-Sharia....of course
-Impartial judiciary... not

Quick look at http://www.uaeprison.com/ might open some eyes.

Posted by: Absolution at May 8, 2005 10:35 AM

I have a memory like a rusted, squeaky steel trap. This time it worked anyway.

One article said, "It's as if she didn't know slavery was abolished in the United States." I'm ashamed to say we threw a pamphlet at the princess. This article describes the shameful conclusion of the punitive princess pushing the poor.
Pocket change and probation for at least aggrivated assault or attempted murder.

Published July 2, 2002, 3:42 PM CDT

ORLANDO -- A Saudi princess accused of pushing her maid down a flight of stairs was fined $1,000 and put on unsupervised probation after a court accepted her no-contest plea Tuesday.

Princess Buniah al-Saud is in Saudi Arabia and didn't appear at the five-minute hearing in which her attorneys didn't contest a misdemeanor battery charge filed in Florida Circuit Court.

In such a plea, a defendant doesn't admit or deny guilt but agrees to a punishment. The judge who accepted the plea also ordered her to pay $131 in court fees and surcharges and to write a letter of acknowledgment to the court.

The plea marked an about-face for the 41-year-old princess. In February, she had promised a judge she would return to the United States for trial, if allowed to go back to Saudi Arabia, because she wanted to clear her name. The princess is a niece of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia.

``It was a good way to resolve the case for all parties,'' said Mark Schnapp, one of her attorneys.

``Would we have preferred to go to trial in the long run? Yes. But at the end of the day, she's in Saudi Arabia. This will terminate the case at this point.''

I'm sure that heartens the impoverished victims of the sadists who run Saudi Arabia.

Posted by: Beagle at May 8, 2005 11:15 AM

The poor victim maid will be lucky to get out of the Kingdom with her life. It is certain that the Indonesian government won't help her. Stories like the maid abused in Florida are all over the USA, sometimes publicized and most often, covered up. Yet, the State Dept., knowing full well how servants are treated in the Gulf States, keep issuing visas for these women to accompany their "employers" (read slave holders) to America. These employers include diplomats, businessmen and even college students. Here, in the borders of a democracy, women are routinely abused, raped, threatened and detained in the homes of their "employers." They are denied freedom of movement, freedom of religion and freedom of speech. As an American, I am ashamed that my government does it part to facilitate this abuse of thousands of women, in the name of diplomacy.

Posted by: maryrose at May 8, 2005 12:13 PM

The article Hugh mentioned concerning the abuse of Sri Lankan maids is heartrending. For those who don't want to subscribe, here are some snippets:

KEGALLA, Sri Lanka - The teacher held up an electric cake mixer and told the class of wide-eyed women before her to clean it properly. If it smells, "Mama," as the aspiring maids were instructed to call their female employers, "will be angry and she will hammer and beat you."

"This is where you go wrong," the teacher continued. "That is how Mama beats you and burns you - when you do anything wrong

snip

By one estimate, 15 to 20 percent of the 100,000 Sri Lankan women who leave each year for the gulf return prematurely, face abuse or nonpayment of salary, or get drawn into illicit people trafficking schemes or prostitution.

Many housemaids who run away from their employers are kept in limbo at Sri Lanka's embassies because no one wants to pay their way home. Last year, after their plight was publicized, the government airlifted home 529 maids who had been living for months, packed as tightly as in a slavehold, in the basement of the embassy in Kuwait.

Hundreds of housemaids have become pregnant, often after rapes, producing children who, until Sri Lanka's Constitution was recently amended, were stateless because their fathers were foreigners. More than 100 women come home dead each year, with most deaths labeled "natural" by the host governments, although Sri Lankan officials concede they are powerless to investigate.

snip

There seemed to be a national pact under way: with rare exceptions, the returning women did not reveal the worst of their experience, and the departing women did not ask. Sexual harassment and especially abuse were considered too shameful to discuss with husbands, relatives or neighbors.

But while the class steered from the worst, it was often literally in the room next door. One day a girl of delicate beauty, 21-year-old Niroshamie, came into the office, black tendrils curling around her face, X-rays in her hand.

The young scion of the Kuwait house where she worked had repeatedly tried to molest her, finally pushing her to the ground and breaking her wrist. She had to pay for the cast, work with it on for two months, then finance her own way home. She had returned to Sri Lanka with a wrist needing surgery and not a cent more than when she had left.

But the most gruesome cases were kept out of sight, quickly ushered from the airport upon arrival to the Sahana Piyasa, literally the Place of Relief, a shelter run by the foreign employment bureau.

The shelter gets two to three severe abuse cases a week, according to the officials who run it, and often many more. Some women are so badly injured they are carried off the plane on stretchers, or swathed entirely in bandages. Most cases never make the news, and they stay at the shelter until they heal enough not to shock waiting families.

---
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/international/asia/08maids.html

Two to three severe abuse cases a week.

Posted by: Silvester at May 8, 2005 1:48 PM

I'd hazard a guess that her sister, or cousin, or best friend, or just other young women she has got to know, are still working under contract, and she has agreed that she would not wish them to meet with any unfortunate accidents.

This is the sort of thing that used to be exposed by valiant undercover reporters. Are you listening Yvonne Ridley? If you wanted to go under cover again and find something interesting to write about here's your chance. No? Oh why ever not?

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 9, 2005 2:51 AM

From BBC "Have you Say" over the weekend on the subject of ending slavery http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4514279.stm

"As a Muslim, I have a different view of slavery. Slavery is part of Islam. It is not racially based. Instead it is a fundamental aspect of the Islamic society. Westerners think slavery is a bad thing because Westerners treated slaves so badly. In Islam the master must look after his slaves even better than he looks after himself. The idea that slavery is always wrong is just another example of Western cultural imperialism.
Saeed Aktar, Birmingham, England"

and "What business is it of the West what we do in Africa? You all claim to be so tolerant and multicultural, but then try to stop every custom you don't agree with. Most 'slaves' in Africa are better off than American or British blacks, who have no rights or protection.
Name withheld, Niger"

I wonder why that debate didn't last long?

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at May 9, 2005 7:36 AM

I said it many times before: Let's chase them out of their palaces, occupy the oilfields, confiscate the bank accounts and chase them into the desert where they belong... Not doing what we should have done long ago prolongs the agony of the west. Stop the money, the terror will stop by itself...

Posted by: Terminator at May 10, 2005 6:27 AM