modern day slavery - please can we talk about this?

[Emerencealwayshopeful]

This article is terrifying. The Saudi Government has an online database of women

Australian border force has cancelled women’s visas if they are travelling without a guardian in order to explicitly deny the opportunity to request asylum. Women who try to escape are disappearing. There are young women in hiding all over the world hoping to avoid being returned to slavery.

I was unaware of the way technology has been utilised to control a whole country’s worth of women. After reading this I can’t understand why I didn’t know, why there isn’t a campaign to offer all Saudi women who seek it asylum in another country.

No sanctions. No regular protests outside of embassies that make the news regularly.

I posted another thread a few minutes ago about local politics and the silencing and removal from the party of those who believe that biology is the cause of women’s oppression and that we must retain language to express that.

I’m angry and upset on so many levels right now.

It is dreadful. And I feel like the Saudi government knows it's losing its grip a bit and like an abusive partner will get worse.

Is it oil again? Oil is worth so much more than women who really ought to know their place. Also, is this why that woman who wanted to run away to Australia got stopped? Did the Australians tell on her?

Is it oil again? Oil is worth so much more than women who really ought to know their place.

It's pretty much oil, yes. There really isn't particularly much else of interest to the rest of the world on the Arabian peninsula. (And, yes, I'm fully aware that several Gulf countries, including Saudi, are making some major efforts to diversify and turn themselves into, essentially, service based economies. It's still propped up by the fact that they almost literally pump cash out of the ground, mind.)

Up until about the 60s or 70s, the gulf states were essentially desert backwaters with nothing much happening. Nowadays, they're in many ways economically over-developed desert backwaters. And, in all fairness, and as despicable I believe their treatment of women and, for that matter, political and religious dissidents is: there's also a point somewhere in there about social change failing to keep pace with a sudden influx of material wealth. Just look at the social upheaval caused by the industrial revolution. And that, at the end of the day, might have been a somewhat less drastic change than going from a desert dwelling people to rolling in oil money within a few short decades.

And, no, none of that excuses how Saudi treats actual real life humans.

And, yes, Saudi women should get asylum by default.

And don't even get me started on slavery of the traditional persuasion, also still alive and kicking in the Gulf.

But, yeah, it mostly is oil. Or more like: the fact that it happens in a wealthy, seemingly modern society and that we even know about it is.

Horrifying. It's like a dystopian science fiction story - but in real life.

After reading this I can’t understand why I didn’t know, why there isn’t a campaign to offer all Saudi women who seek it asylum in another country.

I don't think it's oil, though - I think it's that abuse/control of women is so common that no one want to open up that category of human rights abuse to asylum, because of the potential implications of hugely increasing the number of asylum seekers from all sorts o countries. Though I could be out of date about this.

I agree. It's not just the oil.
It's the same reason why hate crime based on sex is not recognised. It would break up society as we know it.

And at some level men elsewhere acknowledge the ownership too, I think

Kesstrel - maybe.

I was so frustrated when the handmaiden tale came out and white women saw themselves in the characters and identified with Offred - so many people refusing to believe that nothing in that book hasn’t or isn’t already happening.

The simplest way to ensure that women cannot claim asylum based on sex based oppression is to remove the language that defines us as a class. Look over there at the magician - if you watch closely you’ll miss seeing the men dismantling our rights.

Holy fuck.

This is truly awful. I mean I knew women in Saudi had it bad but I didn't realise technology was being used like this. They are all prisoners.

I cannot imagine men having control of me like this.

yes I think the UK stays silent because of oil. Arms sales too? We had a little fuss when King Abdullah died and flags were flown at half mast but that was it.

Incredibly brave women who do try to escape.

Ugh, having a bloke tapping into an app saying how many times a year I might be allowed up a road or whatever - once, five times, unlimited. Jesus.

my mum was a slave. She was a stay at home house wife and not given any cash for herself.

I don't know much about the international response to Apartheid in South Africa, but I know there were sanctions. We need an international response at least equal to that.

My brother works for a UK company that was proposing working with the Saudis and some of the staff were understandably a bit shocked. They were called into a meeting to be reassured how the new king was so progressive and things were getting better. My brother wasn't buying it and was asked to leave the meeting for making a fuss.

You would think that not doing business with a regime that literally enslaves women would be a pretty low bar to meet for business ethics.

OP, can you talk about slavery without making derogatory comments about other women?

It is a system of apartheid for women and yet we are all supposed to overlook it and accept ‘cultural differences’. Proof that misogyny is the only kind of hatred that is still acceptable in 2019. Saudi Arabia is an evil regime and should be shunned the way that apartheid South Africa was in the 1980s.

South Africa also has raw materials and resources the world needed but oil trumps everything, it seems.

Thank you for sharing.

Very informative.

Am shocked by the Australians colluding with the Saudis in this, when they know they are likely to be killed on being sent back.

Agree that Saudi women who escape should be seen as automatic asylum seekers for good reason. They are indeed prisoners.

Oh. My. God. That is horrific. I had no idea that this technology existed / was being used by Saudi Arabia. That is truly dystopian.

Yup I've been saying this for years, we SHOULD be taking on more women from abroad. We get this constant cycle when immigration/refugees comes up that any criticism of the current paradigm means you're a racist. Well actually say we keep our year on year immigration exactly the same but avoid the demographic displacement we are seeing of having predominantly men move here?

I'd be all in favour of prioritising women from places like Saudi Arabia, Africa etc.

Fucking sickens me

Absolutely, Critequal. I agree. Women should be given priority in asylum applications, especially those fleeing sex-based oppression. Women usually integrate better into host cultures too, given the chance, and are less likely to engage in crimes or violence (not saying refugees do tend to commit crimes or violence, but men in general do)

I won’t go on holiday to the gulf states and can even contemplate working there despite it being “money for nothing” for engineers.
I can’t changed the fact that Britain and Scotland was built on the sweat of slaves but I can be dam sure my son is never in 50 ft of a slave or their labour. Which is why I look into where clothes are made and don’t go to my local nail salon laundering money for drug dealers.
I think it’s about oil only indirectly. No one wants to upset the royal family and the status quo by pointing out women are humans not possessions and risking losing all that lovely oil.

Appalling.

Is there a petition about this?

There was a report on 4corners (abc television Australia) Monday night. I’m not sure where it’s available to watch from the UK,

Australian border force in Hong Kong and Indonesia have asked women why they are not travelling with a guardian. They are cancelling tourist visas because there is an expectation that women will claim asylum once they arrive. I would not be surprised to hear that other countries are doing the same.

Soudi embassies are cancelling passports. Leaving people stranded. It’s absolutely terrifying and horrifying.

Also, women who campaigned for the right to drive have been disappearing. There is a theory that the state does not want any of the credit for the new laws going to the activists.

No, I don’t know if there is a petition. To whom? Asking what?

Yes, here in the West I keep seeing women freak out about how this is a future tale for us. I always saw it as a comment on what had happened in Iran (I hadn't thought of Saudi tbh) because Iran had a free and open society and then they pushed all those poor women back into the dark ages for religion. So it was a "look, what if it happened here, this is what it would be like" and no one got it. Now they have made it into a popular movie. Still no one gets it, even while they celebrate the "right" to wear hijab. It's mindbending to watch "feminists" twist themselves up over this.