The majority of foreign workers who come to work in Saudi Arabia lead lives akin to slavery. Scholars have characterized the sponsorship system as a kind of late modern slavery, as it grants employers total control over how the law is applied to their workers, thereby promoting mistreatment of foreign nationals.
Within the framework of the Saudi Crown Prince’s Vision 2030, the Saudi government repeatedly pledged to step in to resolve the crisis, shield employees from the whims of employers, and enforce the terms stipulated in employment contracts in compliance with state regulations. However, the state’s intervention and reforms have confirmed that neither the worker nor the state are worth anything, since the sponsor power remains above the law.
Since their arrival, thousands of laborers in the Kingdom have been forced into slavery, as they strive to build a bright future for themselves. Sponsorship in Saudi Arabia devolves into a form of human trafficking, with the Saudi sponsor robbing the worker of his passport from the first day onward and refusing to grant him any autonomy over his life circumstances.
As the cornerstone of all significant economic plans in the Kingdom, Mohammed bin Salman bases his vision for desert projects primarily on the repressive labor system.
The condition of Asian workers in particular provides the strongest evidence of the corruption of the Kingdom’s sponsorship system, the devastation of workers’ lives, and their separation from the human race. Some of them work for decades at a time for meager pay in a single company or institution, compelled to work because they are unable to return home or refuse their sponsor’s orders, which could result in an escape report being filed against them while they are living in their sponsor’s home and force them into slavery.
Even on recognized state holidays, certain customer service representatives working for large organizations—particularly those catering year-round to business executives, affluent patrons, and members of the royal family—are denied vacation time. If they make a mistake, they are chastised, but when they do well, they are seldom rewarded.
Numerous individuals have voiced grievances regarding organizations and businesses terminating their employment without providing prior notice, planning, or recompense for the time they will need to spend looking for other employment, planning their future, or supporting their families. The objector experiences both of these things until his sponsor pardons him and shows mercy on his condition after he reports an escape to the police. Most of them return empty-handed after the sponsor grants them permission to leave the kingdom and return to their home country.
After the nation imposed a complete lockdown, hundreds of people who had their rights violated and lost their jobs due to the coronavirus came forward to share their tragic stories. Some of them had even gone so far as to beg for food, drink, and rent until they could return home.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia hosts an incomprehensible amount of insults for its foreign labor force. All laborers have a tale to tell and a crisis to deal with, which they endure until they flee the nation, detesting the day they arrived in the Kingdom.
These and other accounts substantiate the notion that the MBS’s regime, which murdered and dismembered Khashoggi’s body and packed the prisons with intellectuals, preachers, activists, community leaders, and young people regardless of gender, did not care about humanity. Is there anyone standing behind the careless, unsuccessful young man’s future vision?
