Saudi Arabia announced tough new legal penalties for human trafficking on Monday after years of foreign criticism that it made little effort to stop abuses.
| De facto versus de jure. If I recall correctly, slavery was made illegal there in 1967. Nut for a people that considers wives, daughters and sisters to be de facto property, extending the attitude to not-one-of-us of both sexes is no stretch whatsoever. |
The cabinet set punishments of up to 15 years in prison and a $266,666 fine, the official SPA news agency reported.
It's one thing to have a law, another to enforce it.| Don't make us notice what you're doing in there! |
It included under the definition of trafficking holding a person under control for sexual abuse, forced labour,
| This does not include house servants, I imagine. After all, that's their secondary purpose. |
involuntary begging, slavery or slavery-like practices, and enforced organ removal or medical experimentation. The cabinet agreed that tougher penalties should apply where the offence was committed against a disabled person, a woman or spouse, or a child who was the victim of a parent or guardian.
So they gonna start doing their own housework now? I think not.
The Saudi government has been criticised for years for lacking anti-trafficking laws, despite frequent cases of alleged abuse particularly among the kingdom's seven to 10 million foreign workers, most of whom perform low-wage, low-skilled jobs. "Women, primarily from Asian and African countries, are also believed to have been trafficked into Saudi Arabia for commercial sexual exploitation," a US State Department report published this year said.
So don't get caught, okay, folks?
"In addition, Saudi Arabia is a destination for Nigerian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Afghan, Chadian, and Sudanese children trafficked for involuntary servitude as forced beggars and street vendors."
| Where is it that the boys become racing camel jockeys? |
Second Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz said after the cabinet meeting that the new law "embodies the principles of sharia law which prohibit attacks on the rights of another human being".
Winky winky, princey...
| You have the right to be a slave to one of Allah's chosen, sexual or otherwise. You have the right to submit to whatever Allah's chosen may choose to do to you, for thus you submit to Allah himself, whether or not you recite the Shahada to announce your conversion to the one true religion. Should you revert to Islam, this will not change your slave status. Do you understand these rights as they have been told to you in a language you do not understand? |
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