Tourists Become Targets in Dubai
Kamal swats away a swarm of black desert flies from his face as he
pours coffee from a battered tin pot. His calloused hands are shaking
as he looks furtively at his 'watchman' standing outside in the
courtyard.
'If we are caught speaking to you here, we are finished, you understand
that? They will throw me in prison and deport everyone in this camp,
not just the people in this room. They are actively looking for us,' he
tells me.
The construction workers, packed together inside the tiny hut in one of
Dubai's harsh desert labour camps, are breaking the most fundamental of
all the draconian laws governing immigrants within the United Arab
Emirates - they are holding a union meeting, a practice that is banned
in all but one of the Gulf States. They are also plotting their next
move in protest at their treatment by their Arab employers who, they
claim, exploit them for cheap labour. It's a move that will, for the
first time, involve direct confrontation with the millions of tourists
who visit the city every year. They plan to shame foreigners into
taking notice of their plight.
Dubai, one of the country's seven emirates and uniquely poor in oil, is
at the pinnacle of a decade-long building boom that has transformed the
city into one of the world's most popular tourist destinations. Today
it is the largest construction site in the Middle East, home to
luxurious hotels and three of the largest shopping malls on the planet.
Each year an estimated 700,000 Britons visit the city to take advantage
of its sunshine and pristine beaches. Record numbers from the UK are
shunning the Spanish costas to buy property in the region. By 2008 an
estimated 250,000 Britons will call Dubai their second home.
The city's unrivalled building frenzy may be creating one of the Middle
East's most modern and alluring holiday destinations, but it is
supported by an increasingly disgruntled foreign labour force whose
basic human right - the right to voice their opinion - is denied. 'One
of the world's largest construction booms is feeding off impoverished
immigrant workers in Dubai, but they're treated as less than human,'
said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human
Rights Watch.
A recent report by the group painted a deeply disturbing picture of
immigrant lives in the UAE. It claimed that bleak living conditions,
combined with long working hours and unacceptably low pay, had led to
rising suicide rates among foreign workers in Dubai. In 2005, 80 Indian
residents took their lives, up from 67 in 2004. In addition, an
estimated 880 foreign workers died in accidents on UAE construction
sites.
In recent months, though, the UAE's vast population of foreign workers
have begun to fight back. They have already staged sporadic strikes to
protest at low pay. Women brought in to work as domestic servants are
running away in record numbers. A fortnight ago, in the biggest
outbreak of public dissent in the UAE's history, thousands of workers
rioted at the construction site for the Burj Dubai Tower, which by 2008
will become the world's tallest building.
Angered by withheld payments and mistreatment by their employers, some
2,500 labourers turned on their bosses and the local police, smashing
cars and offices on the site and causing an estimated $1m of damage. In
a sympathy strike a day later, thousands of labourers working at Dubai
International Airport laid down their tools.
According to 36-year-old Kamal (not his real name), who spearheaded the
Burj Dubai protest, more needs to be done. 'These protests received
attention in the press and were forgotten about, we need to do more. I
was involved in a sit-down protest on the motorway last month, but the
police came along with sticks and beat us on the backs and head. Many
of my friends were hospitalised and deported. The riot got a lot of
attention, but things haven't improved for us. We already know what we
have to do next, we take our protests into the malls and to the
beaches. Our situation needs international attention and only by
unsettling tourists can we achieve this. They need to see how desperate
we really are.'
Before dawn every morning of the week Kamal folds up his blanket, steps
over 11 other men sleeping in decrepit bunks in a stuffy, windowless
room, and journeys to work in a chartered company bus which takes him
past the shopping malls and $1,000-a-night hotels.
Five years ago the father-of-four paid about $2,000 for a three-year
work visa to come to Dubai. When he got here, he had to turn over his
passport as security to pay back the loan, as most foreign workers do.
His working week, fitting steel sheeting on to the sides of skyscrapers
in temperatures of more than 40C, with no protective clothing, has left
his hands badly scarred and his back in severe pain.
'I work seven days a week, about 70 hours as a steel fitter. In a good
month I manage to send about 4,000 rupees [£60] home every month,
the rest of my money goes to paying off my loan to come here. I
normally go home and see my wife and daughters for a month each year,
although I haven't been home for a year and a half. I can't afford the
flight. I'm fighting to see my family, we all are.'
The immigrants are angry not only at pay and working conditions on the
building sites, but at the sub-standard accommodation given to them by
construction firms. Despite claims by contractors and the authorities
in the UAE that the camps were being improved, many of the sites
visited by The Observer in Sanapour, on the desert approaches to Dubai,
told an entirely different story, with immigrants crammed into tiny
pre-fabricated huts, 12 men to a room, forced to wash themselves in
filthy brown water and cook in kitchens next to overflowing toilets.
On the surface, the Dubai authorities have seemingly tried to respond
to the concerns. Last week Ali al-Kaabi, the UAE's Labour Minister,
revealed that a newly proposed law may give labourers the right to form
trade unions and bargain collectively. But he said intelligence he had
received suggested radical tactics were being deployed in workplaces by
militant left-wing Indian and Pakistanis intent on disrupting society.
Kaabi said those who rioted and were in prison will be prosecuted.
'They will be deported if they are found guilty,' he said. 'That will
be used as a lesson to others.'
The Observer