Bahrain Unpaid Asian workers face starvation while Pearl square protesters partied
#Lulu #Feb14 During the occupation of the pearl roundabout from the 19th February many Shi’a businessmen in Bahrain showed their support for the protesters by supplying their encampment with prestigious quantities of food and other supplies, produced or sourced by their own companies. While protesters feasted on the freebies offered nightly at the Pearl expatriate Asian workers employed by these companies were left to fend for themselves.
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These workers tell a different story, not one of feasting or of a popcorn revolution but one of deprivation, desperation and despair; one in which wages had not been paid since last December (long before the revolution); it is a tale of the abuse of Asian workers, of starvation and entrapment. All carried out by people who claimed that they represented democratic reform and universal human rights.
Gulf Daily News 21st March 2011
Gulf Daily News » Local News » Unpaid workers face starvation
#bahrain 21st march workers at Habib Al Awachi not paid for m... on Twitpic picture scanned from the press article
#bahrain March 21st Sanad The empty cold store no money no go... on Twitpic
Another tale of woe from the same page today
Gulf Daily News » Local News » Volunteers provide emergency rations
Nabeel Rajab President and Maryam Al Khawaja Head of Foreign Relations at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, Al Haq activists Hassan Mushaima and Abdul Jalil al-Sangaece, postulate that the demonstrations were about equality and human rights. Yet fail to acknowledge or recognize, even turning a blind eye to the abuses committed by their own Shi’a community against the expatriate workers and other that live within.
For a revolution that procrastinated at the outset about a lack of employment opportunities for the Shi’a youth, it is a bit of a conundrum and even a paradox that some of the biggest Shi’a owned businesses, paymasters of the revolution employ such a high percentage of foreign workers.
The Shi’a Businessmen all claim that they are owed money from the very government they sought to bring down. Yet financed and encouraged the protesters at the Pearl to bring Bahrains commercial activities to a halt. They supported anarchy on the streets, a blockade of Manama; it’s financial and commercial heart. They provided busses and transportation for roaming demonstrators at the various rallies outside government ministries while denying the same services for which they where contacted by the government to others, the transportation of children to School. Often instead transporting school children as young as seven from the Shi’a community to the very same street demonstrations. In all some very serious Rights abuses all encouraged and sanctioned by the representatives of Human rights Societies and opposition leaders here in Bahrain. Media coverage on this issue from the international press and this abuse zero, from international organizations again zero, one has to ask why.
Habib Ali Awachi and Ali Bin Ebrahim Abdul A'al Holding Company both in Sanad a Shi’a strong hold employ between them some five hundred Asian workers, but for the fact that the large Christian community here has been able to provide some support no one is even aware of their plight. Accommodated in a Shi’a area access has been denied to both Government representatives and Sunni Charities thus far to aid and assist these men but for a small article in the local newspaper no one would even know the misery that these men have had to endure daily at the expense of those that claim themselves to be the victim. They partied while poor men staved!!!
Fred Williams