Ethiopian women face violence, rape in Saudi Arabia

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Ethiopian migrant workers as well as right activists say female workers are being “beaten, robbed, imprisoned and raped” in Saudi Arabia.

Zeneit Hussein, a 15-year-old Ethiopian girl who was in Saudi Arabia for eight months says she has been kept in prison for 4 month.

“Life was good for three months, then employer started trouble. I don’t know what they did to me. I became sick; they took me to the hospital…when I arrived at Bole international airport, I was unconscious. Red Cross people took me, I could not walk, they put me on a stretcher” said Zaneit.

Human right activists believe these female workers, being trafficked from Ethiopia’s rural areas, refrain from expressing the true account of their ordeal due to social constraints.

“They have faced so many problems like violence, but they don’t disclose everything. They don’t say it but we have to consider that maybe their problem is associated with violence and rape” said Tirubrhan Getnet from Good Samaritan Association.
“They cannot openly say somebody raped me but…some come [back from Saudi Arabia] with gynecological related bleeding which means they have been raped, but they don’t say it,” added Getnet.

This is while on November 12, 2013, the Saudi police killed three Ethiopian migrant workers in the impoverished neighborhood of Manfuhah in the capital, Riyadh, where thousands of African workers, were waiting for buses to take them to deportation centers.

Between nine and 11 million of Saudi Arabia’s 27-million-strong population are foreign workers.

On November 4, a seven-month amnesty for expatriate workers expired. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave the country during the time they had to rectify their visa status without penalty.

The Intsernational Organization for Migration (IOM) says nearly 140,000 undocumented Ethiopian migrant workers have been taken to home from Saudi Arabia following Riyadh’s violent crackdown against illegal immigrants.

Many of the foreign workers say they could not use the amnesty due to “bureaucratic difficulties” or disputes with their original sponsors.

Foreign workers cannot change jobs or leave Saudi Arabia without the permission of their sponsors, who are often Saudi companies or individuals providing workers to businesses for profit.