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> 21,000 people seems like a massive amount of dead. I know that Saudi Arabia and other gulf states abuse foreign workers horribly, but can the death tool reall

> 21,000 people seems like a massive amount of dead. I know that Saudi Arabia and other gulf states abuse foreign workers horribly, but can the death tool really be that high? That works out to 3,000 per year. That seems incredibly high. How can that only be coming out now? Enormous numbers of people die very frequently without coverage from mainstream corporate media. Your surprise is mostly from the fact that whatever outlets you would expect to be the watchdogs for this sort of thing, haven't been barking. There have been guerilla documentaries on slave labor in the gulf for years. I believe the one I saw was Vice. They had people working 12 hour days in the sun with no breaks and sleeping in metal shacks with no A/C in the desert. I think something like 5,000 civilians have been killed in Myanmar with very little western coverage. Not sure how many have been killed in Sudan in the last year but it is in the tens of thousands. Both of these cases have millions of displaced people as well. I get that those are wars and this is just slavery, but I'm just trying to make the point that unless you go out of your way to consume media outside the mainstream you'll probably miss a lot of this stuff. It is incredibly shocking when you first hear about it.

freeqaz 2y ago
Where do you go for this information though? I think that's the tool that many people struggle to understand here. If you have the desire to learn more, how do you get there?
- MisterTea 2y ago
  You have to journey outside of your local national news networks. Foreign news networks often have English editions or counterparts and there are numerous translation services on line.
- wormlord 2y ago
  I like many of the journalists from The Intercept[0]. You can find publications that are outside the mainstream and then follow journalists independently on substack. Many of them collaborate with each other, it is kinda like the MCU of journalism. [0] https://theintercept.com/ https://theintercept.com/
- Out_of_Characte 2y ago
  You dont. People all around the world are in various ways economically enslaved. Its just that in western countries we have rules in place to limit what you could contractually mandate from an employee. You can report unsafe working conditions, long hours, unreasonable pay or discrimination based on immutable characteristics. Usually you report this to your boss, if he doesn't listen then you report it to an independent organisation to arbitrate, if this doesn't work then you have courts, social media and governments to rely on. If all else fails you could quit your job at no repercussions and find a new one. its just that all of methods above are useless if the organisation has close ties to all of these pathways of resolution.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
I don't buy this "blaming the mainstream media" for the upteenth time. First of all, looking at your other examples of Myanmar and Sudan, there have been tons of coverage in the mainstream media about those issues. What the OP is saying about 21000 laborers dying in Saudi Arabian is that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out, and then the "mainstream media" would have had huge incentive to get the word out as well. E.g. wouldn't this have been gigantic news in places like the Philippines and India where many of these laborers come from? As OP points out, I think the bigger problem is separating out on-the-job deaths from "natural" deaths. I.e. how many deaths would you normally expect from 10M people over 7 years? My guess is that it's some combination of (a) truly awful slave-like conditions, (b) just general "lack of safety culture" conditions (e.g. ~100 people died building the Hoover Dam - I don't think people considered them slaves but they definitely weren't following OSHA rules), (c) accidental deaths that happen in any large project over this amount of time, and (d) natural deaths. The journalistic challenge is that it's difficult to tease out these different causes.
- lostlogin 2y ago
  It seems relevant that Myanmar and Sudan are easy to blame, as most places don’t depend on them for anything and they are poor countries. That isn’t true of Saudi.
- moralestapia 2y ago
  >that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out You obviously have never done things from a non-privileged situation. It is extremely difficult to disseminate ideas that lie outside the overton window. Exhibit A: you. You just "don't believe it" and that's usually the end of the conversation. These people have everything against them. It is of no surprise, to me, that their anguish and problems go completely unnoticed by Western society.
- mtalantikite 2y ago
  > What the OP is saying about 21000 laborers dying in Saudi Arabian is that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out, and then the "mainstream media" would have had huge incentive to get the word out as well. Well, it's more complicated than that. Take Bangladesh. Most of the people dying are extremely poor young men from the gram (village), whose families are not going to have the power to get their stories in the newspapers, which are owned by ruling class families. Some of these papers even have sibling businesses in their parent conglomerates that actively recruit workers to go to SA, UAE, etc. [0] Also, the political system is desperate for Saudi investment [1][2], so they aren't necessarily going to make a huge public fuss about it. It's certainly in the news though [3][4]. That's all to say that families absolutely know about this, talk about it on social media groups, and nothing happens. [0] https://bashundhara-bd.com/ https://bashundhara-bd.com/, which is owned by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashundhara_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashundhara_Group, which owns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Pratidin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Pratidin . [1] https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/28/21535 https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/28/21535 [2] https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/27/21480 https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/27/21480 [3] https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/87ot8fmapn https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/87ot8fmapn [4] https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/vomgbw8zwa https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/vomgbw8zwa
doctorpangloss 2y ago
[flagged]
- wormlord 2y ago
  > someone compares US v. Saudi worker fatalities > the time I wasted on your meaningless, unrelated and high drama warble garble. "The US also has really high worker fatalities, therefore I have silenced the cognitive dissonance in my head by justifying the deaths of my fellow man, now I will claim that you are owned!"
- nostrebored 2y ago
  complaining about low signal comments while contributing nothing isn’t a great way to use HN. The gp isn’t wrong — events covered in media aren’t really based on magnitude.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    I'm guessing fear of being dismembered into small pieces weighs in the decision of reporting negative news on the events in Saudi Arabia
- bitcharmer 2y ago
  [flagged]
fmajid 2y ago
During the Second Congo War, 42,000 people died every month. To resounding silence from Western media. It's true, they had committed the unforgivable sin of being born black.

freeqaz 2y ago

Where do you go for this information though? I think that's the tool that many people struggle to understand here. If you have the desire to learn more, how do you get there?

MisterTea 2y ago
You have to journey outside of your local national news networks. Foreign news networks often have English editions or counterparts and there are numerous translation services on line.
wormlord 2y ago
I like many of the journalists from The Intercept[0]. You can find publications that are outside the mainstream and then follow journalists independently on substack. Many of them collaborate with each other, it is kinda like the MCU of journalism. [0] https://theintercept.com/ https://theintercept.com/
Out_of_Characte 2y ago
You dont. People all around the world are in various ways economically enslaved. Its just that in western countries we have rules in place to limit what you could contractually mandate from an employee. You can report unsafe working conditions, long hours, unreasonable pay or discrimination based on immutable characteristics. Usually you report this to your boss, if he doesn't listen then you report it to an independent organisation to arbitrate, if this doesn't work then you have courts, social media and governments to rely on. If all else fails you could quit your job at no repercussions and find a new one. its just that all of methods above are useless if the organisation has close ties to all of these pathways of resolution.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

I don't buy this "blaming the mainstream media" for the upteenth time. First of all, looking at your other examples of Myanmar and Sudan, there have been tons of coverage in the mainstream media about those issues. What the OP is saying about 21000 laborers dying in Saudi Arabian is that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out, and then the "mainstream media" would have had huge incentive to get the word out as well. E.g. wouldn't this have been gigantic news in places like the Philippines and India where many of these laborers come from? As OP points out, I think the bigger problem is separating out on-the-job deaths from "natural" deaths. I.e. how many deaths would you normally expect from 10M people over 7 years? My guess is that it's some combination of (a) truly awful slave-like conditions, (b) just general "lack of safety culture" conditions (e.g. ~100 people died building the Hoover Dam - I don't think people considered them slaves but they definitely weren't following OSHA rules), (c) accidental deaths that happen in any large project over this amount of time, and (d) natural deaths. The journalistic challenge is that it's difficult to tease out these different causes.

lostlogin 2y ago
It seems relevant that Myanmar and Sudan are easy to blame, as most places don’t depend on them for anything and they are poor countries. That isn’t true of Saudi.
moralestapia 2y ago
>that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out You obviously have never done things from a non-privileged situation. It is extremely difficult to disseminate ideas that lie outside the overton window. Exhibit A: you. You just "don't believe it" and that's usually the end of the conversation. These people have everything against them. It is of no surprise, to me, that their anguish and problems go completely unnoticed by Western society.
mtalantikite 2y ago
> What the OP is saying about 21000 laborers dying in Saudi Arabian is that huge number would have been noticed by lots of people - and a lot of these people would have had huge incentive to get the word out, and then the "mainstream media" would have had huge incentive to get the word out as well. Well, it's more complicated than that. Take Bangladesh. Most of the people dying are extremely poor young men from the gram (village), whose families are not going to have the power to get their stories in the newspapers, which are owned by ruling class families. Some of these papers even have sibling businesses in their parent conglomerates that actively recruit workers to go to SA, UAE, etc. [0] Also, the political system is desperate for Saudi investment [1][2], so they aren't necessarily going to make a huge public fuss about it. It's certainly in the news though [3][4]. That's all to say that families absolutely know about this, talk about it on social media groups, and nothing happens. [0] https://bashundhara-bd.com/ https://bashundhara-bd.com/, which is owned by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashundhara_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashundhara_Group, which owns https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Pratidin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Pratidin . [1] https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/28/21535 https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/28/21535 [2] https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/27/21480 https://en.bd-pratidin.com/national/2024/10/27/21480 [3] https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/87ot8fmapn https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/87ot8fmapn [4] https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/vomgbw8zwa https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/vomgbw8zwa

doctorpangloss 2y ago

[flagged]

wormlord 2y ago
> someone compares US v. Saudi worker fatalities > the time I wasted on your meaningless, unrelated and high drama warble garble. "The US also has really high worker fatalities, therefore I have silenced the cognitive dissonance in my head by justifying the deaths of my fellow man, now I will claim that you are owned!"
nostrebored 2y ago
complaining about low signal comments while contributing nothing isn’t a great way to use HN. The gp isn’t wrong — events covered in media aren’t really based on magnitude.
- dylan604 2y ago
  I'm guessing fear of being dismembered into small pieces weighs in the decision of reporting negative news on the events in Saudi Arabia
bitcharmer 2y ago
[flagged]

fmajid 2y ago

During the Second Congo War, 42,000 people died every month. To resounding silence from Western media. It's true, they had committed the unforgivable sin of being born black.