Quick News Roundup February 12, 2011

ArabNews (Saudi Arabia) reports that the subcontractors to the US Embassy are abusing their employees.  They cite a report by the US Office of Inspector General, and provide a link to it.  Abuse of South Asian employees is fairly common in the Gulf.  I don't mean that as an excuse, just as a piece of information.

A senior rabbi in Israel is under arrest for supporting a book (Torat Hamelech) that says when it is okay to kill Gentiles.  He refused to be questioned by police, because it is a religious issue.  This whole thing originally came to a head in January of last year (see this article).  I'm not sure what to think of it.  It sounds as though some people want it to be thought of as a scholarly work, while others see it as inciting violence.  The article I linked to makes some good points about the authors of the study (also rabbis) and that they may be inciting violence.  I will say one thing though:  if a Catholic priest wrote a book saying that the Bible says sometimes it's okay to kill Jews, there would be a huge uproar and calls of anti-Semitism.  But almost no one would say it's a religious issue and the police should stay out of it.

There's more about that senior rabbi in this article, which compares the Muslim Brotherhood to the ultra-Orthodox religious right in Israel.  They believe that Judaism trumps democracy, and want to take Israel even further down that road.

This was written before Mubarak left, but it's a quick look at how events in Egypt are affecting the Gulf.  And this more recent article covers the current situation.  Even Palestine is affected and should have elections in September.

Queen in Gulf

The Queen of England is in the Gulf States on a 5-day tour.  She was in Oman when the Tate loaned pictures to the Sultan's palace.  Many of the smaller Gulf States started out as British protectorates, and some rulers were educated in England, so Great Britain has had a presence there for a while and tries to stay on good terms.


Edit:  And a British frigate has been sent to the region to protect other vessels from pirates off the coast of Africa.

Human Rights

Yet again, Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of domestic worker abuse. A maid from Sri Lanka had 24 nails hammered into her, when she complained about her workload. The Gulf States have a bad history of this. There are huge numbers of Southeast Asians who go to the Gulf, to make money to support their families back home. And they are generally exploited. I met a Pakistani man who had to work everyday for 1 year at his hotel job, then he received a month off to visit his family. And that was a good job.

It goes even further than that. Southeast Asians are seen as menial workers in the Gulf States. If you are a person of Southeast Asian ancestry, you may not want to travel there. I have read hotel reviews of wealthy Indians being mistreated at fancy hotels. I went on a student trip to the Gulf and a Muslim student was hassled at the airport because her ancestry is Pakistani. The Arab and Western ("white") looking students had no problems whatsoever. But every time we reached a security checkpoint, she was pulled out of line and her bags searched. Welcome to the Gulf.

Gulf News

A lot of news from the Gulf this week.

*Women in Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch says that the way their rights are curtailed, they're treated like children.

*Who needs GMT when you could have Mecca Time! Some scholars think Mecca should replace GMT, especially as it's a product of colonialism that was imposed on them by the British. Also some info about a Mecca Watch that shows the direction of Mecca. No pictures, unfortunately.

*Condoleezza Rice is in the Gulf too, for the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) meeting in Bahrain.

*And Ethiopia has broken it relations with Qatar, claiming they are funding rebels from Eritrea.

Gulf Quick Roundup

Bahrain is having some problems. They are majority Shia, but the government is Sunni. There were some protests in December demanding compensation for abuses committed in the 1980s and 1990s. A protester died, which sparked more protests, and over a dozen men were arrested. They claim they've been tortured, and this is sparking more protests. Articles from BBC and Gulf News (Note: I can't find the article now. The title was "Lawyer demands medical tests for 'tortured' Bahraini Shias").

Gulf Workers (read "cheap immigrant labor") are trying to get more rights. Some have been sent to jail for protesting. In the rich Gulf countries, most of the actual work is done by laborers from Southeast Asia. They aren't paid well and they're quite often treated like crap.