Posts
since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Hamida Ghafour
Tuesday, 04 August 2009
http://www.english.globalarabnetwork.com/200908042038/Opinion/bahrains-guests-may-have-overstayed-their-welcome.html
But Bahrainis are a cosmopolitan lot. The nightclubs, cinemas and bars in Manama have traditionally been part of their liberal culture. That laissez-faire attitude may be changing.
A debate has been raging about what to do with those from outside the country whose behaviour can sully the image of the island, Adel al Moawdah, a parliamentarian recently said. One and two star hotels are now barred from serving alcohol.
"We call it dirtying the face of the country," said Mr al Moawdah.
To clean it up they may wish to start with the hotel in Bahrain where I recently stayed. Every evening, small groups of women in very tight, short dresses patrolled the hallways, paying careful attention to who was staying in each room. On a couple of occasions, my male colleague had an unwelcome knock on his door.
It was pretty brazen. This wasn't some dodgy establishment but a landmark hotel that has been around for ages. Some of its guests were families.
Late one evening, I got a phone call in my room. The woman on the other end of the line seemed surprised to hear a female voice.
"I'm sorry ma'am, I was looking for someone else," she said before hanging up.
I'd like to think she was sending up a tray of tea and biscuits and got the wrong room number.
The high number of tourists has also caused another type of problem – harassment of women. My Bahraini host told me that teenage boys from Saudi Arabia sometimes make suggestive remarks to unveiled women they pass on the street, perhaps because they are not accustomed to the sight of women who are not covered up.
The harassment has subsided in recent years but still happens occasionally. And when it does, fist fights can break out between the offenders and Bahraini men angry on behalf of the harassed women.
How chivalrous, I remarked to my host.
"Not really," he said. "the Bahraini boys hope the girls would be grateful and flirt with them instead."
I am sure most readers have asked themselves this question: if the conditions for migrant workers in the Gulf states are so bad why do millions still continue to seek jobs here?
I have never found the typical answers given by human rights and business types satisfactory – that they do so because their home countries, particularly Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, are so poor that any job, regardless of the working conditions, is better than none at all.
There must be other factors. The withholding of salaries and passports and the cramped, unhygienic labour camps are well documented. Many of the stories are so horrendous that you'd think that no one would fill these jobs.
I was having a conversation with Marietta Dias, an Indian woman who has been living in Bahrain since the 1960s who has dedicated her retirement to helping abused low-income workers at a shelter she helps to run in Manama.
Culture also plays a big part in why labourers continue to take up jobs, she conceded. This part of the world, they are told, is paved with gold and there are riches for every man willing to work hard enough. No man wants to return home to his village and admit that his employer cut his pay or hasn't paid him at all. For a woman, confessing that her boss assaulted her would dishonour the whole family. There is too much shame involved.
"It is so frustrating," Ms Dias admitted. "I say to them, `You will go back to your village and tell everyone what it is like, right?' If they admitted the truth it would help thousands of people. But they beg me not to tell anyone what happened to them."
The embassies are not keen to publicise the reality because their countries need the remittances.
A terrible culture of silence shared by millions of people, not just greed and cruelty, allows the abuse to continue.
