Posts
The
Slaves of Dubai
Most
people know Dubai for its massive skyscrapers and luxurious hotels,
but few know that the city was built by modern-day slaves.
For
months, the BBC's Ben Anderson hung out around the glittering, insane
towers springing up in Dubai trying to infiltrate the community of
expatriate workers who are putting them up. What he found when he
finally got in was that the jewel of the Arab world is almost
entirely built upon imported slave labor.
As the wife of an expat working here in the Middle East, I am housed in Dubai, and I am thereby complicit in this mass crime against humanity. My children have played at, and been delighted by, the attractions of this city and her buildings. We have planted our trees of fun memories in the sands watered by the life blood of slaves. And I want to give my excuses of having no idea when I came, of believing the propaganda the same as others, of not having this kind of degradation in my imaginative scope. I want to tell you that it is extremely well hid, that these camps are not even on a map, that we were given other assurances, that the work compounds are surrounded in razor wire and outsiders (especially women) can not gain access. Except. Except. Except history has heard all those excuses on the breath of residents within driving and walking distance of Nazi concentration camps too. And I found myself too incredulous to believe them. How could they claim not to have known? How can we? Silence in the face of evil is consent.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, I am one of the humans who owes the prisoners an answer, but who feels powerless against the tide. Dear, God. What have we done? Did we learn nothing from our struggle to extricate ourselves from the British and American slave trade? How do we quit this mess, to alleviate our conscious without doing something to put things right? Who will tell Pharaoh to "Let My People Go!" and lead them home again?