SAUDI ARABIA - BEYOND THE THIRD WORLD

The Huam Rights Watch group have issued a report on Saudi women, and the way they are kept in "childhood" by overbearing male relatives.

It's not just Saudi wives either, and I know from experience how foreign servants are treated - I worked in Saudi Arabia for 17 years and saw many incidents of abuse and ill-treatment. Not every Saudi employer is guilty of abuse, and it is not just Saudis either - Sudanese and Syrian incidents too that I know of.

The worst case was a young Malaysian girl who was admitted to the hospital where I worked. She had been beaten by her employers wife, and received severe injuries to her back and arms - the wife having beaten her for laziness. We were asked to examine a sputum sample from the patient because she had a chest infection. She wasn't lazy, she had terminal tuberculosis, and died 2 days later.

Her employer was a senior police officer, and I was so incensed I set out to collect her details in order to foward the case to Amnest International, (the employer was very concerned about his family catching T.B.!).

All records were computerised, and all we had was the slide that had been used to diagnose T.B. I found nothing - she had ceased to exist in the hospital system.

I discussed this with a feamle Sudanese doctor who worked with me in Pathology - a certain Doctor Mona. Her father worked for W.H.O., and her 2 brothers were also doctors. She said it was a terrible case and continued by saying it was OK to slap servants!

A third case was an Indonesian servant who worked for a Syrian doctor in another hospital. The doctor and his wife had been banned from hiring any more maids, although such laws are rarely effective, especially when the doctor concerned was a brother Muslim. This second servant hired jumped from a second floor window rather than put up with the abuse she experienced very day.

These are just 3 of many, and I would never claim that all Middle Eastern people are like this; but there is a mentality that rates the importance of life and human rights based on both your religion and ethnic background.

To make mattters worse, the government and embassies of many third world countries value Saudi trade too highly to do anything when abuse of their nationals happens.

Don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs. Worthington? Don't send your daughter to Saudi to work.