Etheridge replied, “There is real human interest in the topics of suffering people, but at times a new angle is needed to prick the public’s interest” or to spur one story or another to be of interest enough to publish on.
For example, much has been printed recently in Kuwait about Kuwait’s local ranking by the U.S. government in terms of improving human rights within its own borders. (See one such article here: http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=NzU2Mzk3NTk5
) This is because the appointment of a new U.S. Ambassador dovetailed with a human rights report placing Kuwait in the lower third of states fighting human trafficking.
Awareness of rights in Kuwait is a problem as is a lack of substantial awareness among the ex-pat community about their own access to Kuwaiti law, i.e. which could protect them and aid those being abused by unscrupulous ex-pats and Kuwaitis.
Etheridge explains that whenever the U.S. government blacklists a country for it’s lack of human rights, it is a political move—not necessarily a means of making life immediately easier for all those involved.
On the other hand, Muslim on Muslim violence in Kuwait is beyond the acceptable level according to the Asian newspapers I have seen. See the detailed story in one Bangladeshi paper whose author also seems to be reticent or afraid to name names in Kuwait as are the local papers: http://www.weeklyblitz.net/index.php?id=245 One of the quotes of that report from WEEKLY BLITZ states, concerning a victim imprisoned in Kuwait: “Hasina told a friend, who recently visited her in prison [in Kuwait], ‘The purgatory of Bangladesh is far better than the Kuwaiti paradise.’”
Another quote from the same article charges, “Hasina’s ordeal is a pattern of human trafficking, i.e. slavery in the 21st century in the Middle East, in particular in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Qatar. All human rights organizations and the US State Department, for years now, have classified these countries among the worst in terms of human trafficking. Kuwait and the other Arab countries on the Persian Gulf have been urged to do something against human trafficking, but to no avail.”
On the other hand, Etheridge points out that a lot of the human trafficking occurs after people arrive in Kuwait—and not prior to it—which is different than is the case for those émigrés fleeing to Europe or the United States these days. These peoples in European a the USA are more often are involved in illegal recruitment and trafficking before they arrive in those Western countries.
This implies that the issue with Kuwait and other Middle Eastern lands is that the government potentially can do a lot more to improve treatment and protections of foreign labor upon their arrival—as most of them arrive legally in Kuwait rather than illegally, before being forced into human slavery by being kidnapped, by having their passport taken away, etc.
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