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Maids trafficked and sold to wealthy Saudis on black market
- rwmj 4y agoSadly been going on for a while, there was a BBC story from 2019: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50228549 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50228549
- zeristor 4y agoI’m not sure where it fits in in this discussion but doesn’t the US use it’s prison population for forced labour? Am I missing something?
- ceejayoz 4y agoYes; slavery is explicitly permitted under the Constitution as a criminal punishment, even today. It's pretty gross. > Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. I think there's still a significant difference between that and the Saudi maid example, where they've not even been convicted of a crime of any kind.
- BirAdam 4y agoAlthough, the existence of this does create the prison industrial complex. It also drives things like mandatory minimums, the drug war, and other negative aspects of US law. Because there is a financial incentive for convictions and incarceration, more laws with prison as the sentence are made. Lobbyists from major corporations often support these laws, and then purchase the labor from the prisons.
- ceejayoz 4y agoI agree entirely, and it's still not quite the same thing.
- padjo 4y agoIt doesn’t fit in this discussion, unless you want to use one repellent practice to justify another repellent practice.
- naasking 4y agoI'm not sure I see the argument that forced labour as punishment for breaking the law is intrinsically wrong. Community service is compelled labour with the threat of prison of you don't comply. If that seems reasonable to you, then we're not really debating whether compelled labour is the problem so much as the conditions under which it happens.
- bunnyfoofoo 4y agohttps://archive.ph/cyqRJ https://archive.ph/cyqRJ
- okasaki 4y agoI guess now that SA has signaled a slight shift away from the US empire, we're going to be seeing a lot more articles about how evil they are.
- impossiblefork 4y agoYes, although I think it'll be, not because the media apparatus is going to be less lenient, but because they no longer feel the need to restrain their evil. In this case we also presumably have these companies that replace 'master' with 'main' etc. in technical literature and comments, but which are cooperating with things which may well be actual slavery.
- jollofricepeas 4y agoExactly. This is something that leaders from Africa and Latin America have talked about a lot. Western democracies love using the appearance of moral superiority as a diplomatic tool while turning a blind eye to their own corruption and failings (ie. United Fruit, JP Morgan Chase, Boeing, gun violence, police brutality) 1. It’s cheaper to whitewash (ie. affirmative action) than effect change (ie. reparations for Haiti, descendants of slaves in US) 2. It perpetuates the good guys vs bad guys myth /propaganda at home that makes it easier to wage war and disenfranchise “third-world” countries.
- impossiblefork 4y agoI don't think this should be the focus. Slavery is abolished in the west and currently existing slavery should be a primary focus-- whether it's a western company participating in a possible slave market, or Saudi participating in it-- such entities and individuals must obviously be destroyed, and immediately. How we deal with morality and history is a separate question and of less interest.
- willmacdonald 4y agoSlavery is definitely not abolished in the West. It is rife in the UK and Europe.
- mgaunard 4y agoIt's not that different in Singapore which is supposedly a much more humane nation.
- beebeepka 4y agoThey hang people for dealing drugs. Does not fit the much more humane narrative
- ejb999 4y agoon the other hand, the USA has close to 100K drug overdose deaths per year and singapore has close to none - not sure we are being very humane in the USA by allowing so many people to die from a preventable causes - maybe singapore is harsh in their methods, but maybe we should learn something.
- newaccount74 4y agoThe US has tried to be "harsh" on drug dealers for decades, and it hasn't really fixed a thing. Maybe they should just stop prescribing opioids, for a start.
- Xylakant 4y agoIt’s not even the prescription opioids alone - germany has a similar prescription rate for opioids as the US (or at least had for a very long time), and we still don’t see the same effect. The way these treatments are administered and checked upon matters, too as well as the underlying social dynamics.
- olivermarks 4y agoHow has 'the US tried to be "harsh" on drug dealers for decades'? In San Francisco the Honduran drug dealers gather around luxury SUVs for catered meal breaks before resuming their murderous work. We are currently wildly out of control. Enough Fentanyl was seized in California in 2022 to kill everyone in the USA twice. God only knows how much more got through and into people's bodies.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoCan it really be called a black market if it's on both official app stores? Seems more like a grey market.
- zeusflight 4y agoThe legitimacy of an enterprise shouldn't be judged based on where it's allowed to happen - it should be the other way around. The two app stores should be designated as 'slave markets' for allowing this to persist for so long after being alerted. It's especially ironic that these companies are keen on deep invasion of privacy of regular citizens in the name of CSAM and terrorism. This is an exaggerated form of their 'Rules for you, none for me' attitude. In addition, I object to the 'black market' terminology. Unlike the objections these companies have with 'master' on git - which doesn't have any relationship to slavery, black is an actual term related to a race that's misappropriated with a derogatory connotation.
- janlin1999 4y ago> In addition, I object to the 'black market' terminology. [...] black is an actual term related to a race that's misappropriated with a derogatory connotation. It doesn't appear that "black" in "black market" refers to race: "The term “black market” first appeared in print in The Economist magazine in 1931 in reference to an unofficial, or “black,” market in sterling exchange." -- https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/crime-and-law-enforcement/black-market https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/law/cri... Likewise, https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/3wfpdo/comment/cxwd56q/ https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/3wfpdo/comment/c...
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoYeah, it's worth noting that black people weren't usually referred to as black people in western societies back then, but various variations of the N word. Black is an actual colour, and in opposition to light. That's where all these black/grey/white trichotomies come from.
- concordDance 4y ago[flagged]
- leereeves 4y agoThis part seems relevant to HN: > Haraj marketplace remains on Apple and Google stores despite UN slavery warning
- thepangolino 4y ago[dead]
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoWell, the fact that google and apple have slave marketplaces in their app stores should be of relevance to the many google/apple employees that frequent this site.
- gasull 4y agoParler got deplatforming in days, if not hours. It tells you what the priorities are, regardless of your political views.
- hestefisk 4y agoI’d say it’s quite relevant since these people are traded openly on the country’s largest online commerce platform (including auctions). It’s a good example of technology facilitating modern day slavery and therefore very relevant to an open debate about the perceived “modernisation” of Saudi Arabia.
- pfarrell 4y agoAlso in the guidelines Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
- _448 4y agoI once met a very bright young lawyer from London, UK. She had worked on human trafficking cases in the UK. And she was so shocked with what was happening in the UK and the apathy of governments across the world that she decided to do a startup to tackle this problem. It requires a lot of money and connections to get a project of this nature off the ground. She was hoping to get into YC. Was rejected. After few months of trying to raise funds she gave up. She once said to me that there are actually online marketplaces, similar to how Amazon is for goods, to sell humans!
- chinathrow 4y agoThat's actually a shame she got rejected from YC. After war and hunger, human trafficking is one of the worst problems society still have to this day.
- hef19898 4y agoBut it cannot be solved by sending helium balloons woth sulfut into the stratosphere, or by getting saudi money through softbank. So the idea is not the best match for VC funding.
- jacquesm 4y agoInvesting in it might even alienate those investors to the point that they would no longer invest in other startups. Politics at every level.
- treeman79 4y agoSecure borders can stop a lot of it.
- Dawnyhf2 4y ago[dead]
- LatteLazy 4y agoHow was she planning to make money from solving this issue?
- LatteLazy 4y agoFor decades I have been advocating alternative energy in part so that we can let these shitty regemies die.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blagie 4y agoI'd love a discussion of a (serious) solutions. A lot of Western solutions sound like variants of Simpson's Paradox, where equity is increased locally, and decreased globally. This is, for example, true if one provides people with a better-but-not-good-enough option. If I do something not meeting Western standards, I'm liable to get cancelled. On the other hand, many options a step up from slavery are just that: a step up from slavery, and would be considered very exploitative by Western standards. Sustainability matters for scalability. Likewise, cultural imperialism is bad, and a lot of options do a lot more (distributed) harm while helping individuals. I like cultural diversity. Options also need to stakeholders and implementation. It's easy to say "If I were dictator of the world, I would do X," but they do need to content with incentive structures, politics, and similar types of issues. I'm not quite sure how to even have that discussion, since if something can be misinterpreted, you're liable to be cancelled (or at the very least, receive some very bad press).
- enkid 4y agoMaybe not being cancelled shouldn't be your top priority? People talk like getting cancelled is a death sentence. Free speech advocates went to jail in times past. Now people act like getting ratio'd on Twitter for saying something insensitive is the worst possible fate.
- mjburgess 4y agoWell, quite a lot of people have committed suicide. cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjMPJVmXxV8 Not everyone has The Comedy Store stage to relieve their depression.
- throwawayoaky 4y ago[flagged]
- enkid 4y agoSorry, I'm not watching a two hour YouTube video to figure out what point you're making. Suicide is a serious concern and we should certainly take more steps to be civil online, but there's also never a singular simple reason for why someone made that decision.
- bouncycastle 4y ago[flagged]
- jmsmistral 4y agoQuestion - does this mean that Apple could be profiting from slavery through it's 30% fee on purchases via the App Store?
- leereeves 4y agoApple doesn't charge Amazon that fee, so it probably doesn't charge Haraj either.
- vhiremath4 4y agohttps://archive.ph/ezlKi https://archive.ph/ezlKi
- nelox 4y agoLet’s have this conversation after the world does not want or need Saudi oil.
- ksr 4y agoI recently watched the movie Black Girl (1966) which discussed the same subject but in colonial France https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Girl_(1966_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Girl_(1966_film)
- throw_m239339 4y agoThis isn't just saudis. Dubai, Emirates, Egypt ... under the Kafala system, foreign workers gets their passport confiscated by their employers and aren't free to get out of the country. It's slavery, there is no other name for that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system Of course maids get abused, tortured and raped by their employers and the family, and even when they travel to Europe with their employers, they are mistreated the exact same way. But since the Saudis are filthy rich, Europe turns a blind eye...
- Sporktacular 4y agoEuropeans are infuriated by their governments' treatment of wealthy autocrats and oligarchs. They don't turn a blind eye any more than anyone else.
- projectramo 4y agoDoesn’t it seem that if there were an online marketplace or app for slavers we could easily find it, see screenshots etc? I doubt it exists but subservience — or near slavery — is everywhere. I see Mexicans working in very subservient conditions with all kinds of legal constraints. I don’t think we treat our undocumented immigrants better than the Saudis — or anyone else.
- givemeethekeys 4y agoMuch easier to quit and go home if you are undocumented in America.
- frontman1988 4y agoThe sad part is that working as slave maids is the best possible option for a lot of these people. Last week only dozens of Rohingya refugees died because they were adrift on a ship for a month and no country rescued them because they didn't want migrants. South Asia sadly has a lot of such stories. Myanmar in conflict, Afghanistan is shambles, Pakistan desperately poor, Sri lanka also in chaos. Only India is somewhat stable. All of these poor people are exploited a lot by the rich Gulf states.
- newsclues 4y agoAvailable and possible options are two different things. Unfortunately what is available to most is far less than what is possible.
- weatherlight 4y agoFor people saying slavery is 100% abolished in the US. It’s just masked as Penal labor. Slave labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
- booleandilemma 4y agoAs a very visible and recent example, prisoners were used to manufacture hand sanitizer in New York during the height of the pandemic.
- ch1234 4y agoShould they not be? The other alternative is for them to be bored in their cell.
- jherskovic 4y agoThey could be paid for their work. It is labor, after all. And they don't get a choice. The removal of their liberty is supposed to be punishment for their crime, and that's plenty of punishment. Ideally, they'd be reformed while in prison. And while I'm dreaming, they could build a nest egg by working there, instead of being exploited. I'd like a pony, please.
- naasking 4y agoWhat would have happened had they refused to work? They won't get whipped or beaten. Arguably community service under threat of imprisonment is also compelled labour. If you agree that's a valid punishment for a crime, then we're not really talking about whether compelled labour is a problem in and of itself so much as the specific conditions under which labour can be legitimately compelled.
- 4y ago
- newmac 4y agoWe have a Filipino woman who works for us. She has been a citizen here for 25 years and has worked for us for 12. Her sister went to Qatar 15 years ago and has been miserable. We have just finished preparing a sponsorship for her in our country and now need to extract her. It involves having a replacement passport printed for her in the Philippines, her brother flying to Qatar under his Canadian passport and then bussing her to a neighbouring country to fly out of.
- ianai 4y agoI hope she makes it out safely. Both of them.
- xpWr7r1ZeX 4y agoDoes she need the entry visa stamp on the new passport to exit? Or able to get the old passport from her current employers
- newmac 4y agoShe cannot get her old passport. If her "employers" know she is leaving, they will stop it. I won't post about how we plan to get her out but I believe it is a good one and it has very littler risk to her or their brother. Perhaps when it is all done will feel ok posting more. It is costing us a lot of money in the end, but the woman we employ is part of the family at this point and it's important to us that her sister is safe. We will employ the sister on her landing in our country and will do so for at least a year.
- lawgimenez 4y agoAs a Filipino, I have heard so many stories of abuse not just in Arab countries but also in Hong Kong and Singapore. edit: I'm almost 40 now and stories like these have been prevalent since I was a kid.
- Cocktail 4y agoThere is also significant cases before and currently in South Korea, namely illegal immigrants working at farms with nigh-slave labour conditions and factory workers in Samsung/Hyundai etc large multinationals
- throwaway2865 4y agoSee IJM for an example of groups that work on this. Anecdotally, it is common across the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Justice_Mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Justice_Mission
- kjrose 4y agoI remember digging into this somewhat and was surprised how prevalent it was; even in the uk, us and canada. Once you know the current code words for the gender, type of slave, and job, you can even use Google to search and find open sites. It was depressing to see but I honestly could not see what could be done. The fact it is done so openly and with so much money involved, I found it hard to believe that law enforcement was clueless if not complicit in it.
- TheCapn 4y ago>Once you know the current code words for the gender, type of slave, and job, you can even use Google to search and find open sites. Well, don't hold back. Open a window for us into that realm. If it was that "open" would it not be on the radar of agencies combating the human trafficing?
- jacquesm 4y agoThe agencies doing that have their hands more than full, there are many more cases that they know about than that they have personnel to act on because politically it isn't a huge priority so there aren't funds enough to make this go away once and for all. Chinese get smuggled by the truckload into Western Europe and the only time you will hear about it is if they end up suffocating, which makes it newsworthy. And that's just one example of many. I'm against the death penalty but human traffickers make me doubt my stance on that.
- dannyw 4y agoI think a lot of journalists and reporters would be interested. Have you thought about sending in a tip?
- akskos 4y agoWhat are these sites?
- brador 4y agoFrom the article: "Google declined to comment."
- college_physics 4y agoThe idea of an otherised society where some home sapiens are less human than others has deep roots and countless manifestations (war, slavery, gender biases, other forms of exploitation). It is also the primary manifestation of evil. Yet is clearly an unstable (high maintenance) collective mental state. It is predicated on active oppression. The stable ground state is fundamentally egalitarian. Almost by definition. Progress and civilization are not relative concepts. They are counted objectively by the number of brains that can reach full emotional, perceptive, creative etc maturity.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago> Yet is clearly an unstable (high maintenance) collective mental state. It is predicated on active opression. The stable ground state is fundamentally egalitarian. Almost by definition I would not be able to come to this conclusion based on my experiences. Humans are very tribal animals, and it takes a lot of work to work towards egalitarianism. You can even see it in children, where they form “cliques”, and engage in bullying, even amongst siblings. Not that it is inevitable that humans will “otherise” other humans to the level that they are OK with keeping them as slaves, but there is a large spectrum of ordering in probably all of our minds, as opposed to viewing everyone as the same.
- college_physics 4y agothere is a lot of clanish behavior that is somehow innate and can be exploited. there is also an enormous cultural ability to rationalize and justify the "naturalness" of a multi-class society. further, people are born with a spectrum of abilities and character traits that facilitates segmentation. without oversimplifying though the complex interplay of these and other factors (e.g. the degree to which technology can diminish the need for subjugated human labor) the point is that no human likes to be considered a subhuman. Hence the construct is predicated on social machinations and its persistence, at least at scale, is always precarious.
- ianai 4y agoThis being why I call oil “conflict fuel” and try to minimize my use as close to zero as possible.
- bentt 4y agoThe term “trafficking” unnecessarily obscures the reality of this phenomenon. It’s slavery. Call it slavery.
- celtoid 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- zahma 4y agoThe kafala system isn't going anywhere so long as we can't tell these countries to take their oil and drink it. The same thing (i.e. "sponsoring" someone by capturing that person's passport and forcing low wage labor for any hope of retrieval) happened to those enslaved workers in Qatar, and then the Qatari women had the nerve to brag about how liberated they were -- that there was no housework to which they were shackled. Hmm, I wonder how many other problems they can outsource to the exploited world's poor?
- pipeline_peak 4y agoI can’t wait to see these useless oil states crumble. Dubai, Qatar, all these barbaric places flourishing in oil wealth, using it toward trafficking and slavery as they drive Mercedes over sand dunes and eat Johnny Rocket…makes me so angry
- cannonpr 4y agoSo long as society isn’t willing to address some basic matters, slavery and exploitation will exist. Finite resources, unrestrained population growth, paired with rampant individualism where everyone wants more than their neighbour. I wonder what the effects of having a perfect enforcement mechanism against exploitation would be ? Would we finally plan resource allocation and population growth more reasonably ? I suspect it would just go horribly wrong somehow and we would end up in some version of Malthusianism.
- Sporktacular 4y agoHard to put a finger on why but there's something about gulf Arab countries and a common attitude of entitlement and arrogance that's special to them, but not so in Oman and Iraq. As if money buys superiority.
- ksniwmidjd 4y agoThe sketches for the two guys that kidnapped Madeline McCann look an awful lot like the Podesta brothers. Then there’s the whole Prince Andrew thing. And then Epstein and Maxwell. How does Maxwell get convicted on trafficking charges but none of her clients do? As long as the political class is heavily involved the problem isn’t gonna get solved.
- greatgib 4y agoVery honestly I hope that these maids shit in the food of their employer or use their toothbrushes to clean the toilets when their are not looking.