Saudi sick parlours: Girls smash sex slave shackles

HYDERABAD: A young girl from the city working in a beauty parlour in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, slashed her wrist last year. The suicidal trigger followed constant torture by her employer who wanted her to go for the dreaded ‘home service’.
“Home service means flesh trade. When a girl is sent there, it means that she has to become a sex slave of the men whose house it is,” said Noorjahan Akbar Husen of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, who along with two Hyderabadi girls, one of whom had slashed her wrists, escaped from the clutches of their employer.
Speaking about the harrowing time that she has been through, 38-year-old Noorjahan said when she refused to give in to the demands of her employer, she was tortured.“I was beaten up. My employer would pull my hair and bang my head to the wall. I resisted going for ‘home service’, but not all do. I have noticed that many Hyderabadi girls get trapped in Saudi,” Noorjahan told TOI on phone from Ahmedabad.
In the beauty parlour where she worked, there have been instances of girls jumping from the first or second floor of the building to escape being forced into flesh trade. Trafficking of women into Saudi Arabia is common with many women being pushed into flesh trade.
Noorjahan said she was deceived right from the beginning. She and her husband were promised by an agent in Mumbai that they would be employed in Riyadh. At the airport, her husband was driven away to work in a house while she was taken to Dammam despite her protests. For two months, she got half of what she was promised as salary. And for six months, she was in jail, only because she had resisted attempts to be pushed into flesh trade. “When I resisted to going for ‘home service’, she (employer) took us to the police station and got cases booked against us saying that we are trying to show Saudi Arabia in bad light,” Noorjahan said.
Girls want to stay mum
Back in India, the Hyderabad girls, whose employer was pushing them into ‘home service’, say they rather not tell anyone what they went through. They pleaded with Noorjahan, another returnee, not to reveal their names to anyone, for obvious reasons.
For her part, Noorjahan, who came back to India last October, has finally decided to speak out. She said she wants to make sure other girls do not fall into the trap of agents and land in trouble in Saudi. “I used to see a lot of Hyderabadi girls being brought there. They are shocked when they are forced to go for ‘home service’. Inevitably they tortured until they give in,” she said.
If being tortured by her employer was not enough, Noorjahan said that at the detention centre in Dammam jail where she was for six months, was no safe haven either. “A man who showed an authorisation (sic) that he was a registered volunteer for the Indian embassy said he would send me back to India and took money. He also made an indecent proposal. When I informed my husband, he took leave from work in Riyadh and got me out of the detention centre,” Noorjahan said. She gave the name of the person in question, which this newspaper is refraining from publishing, but she will give it to the authorities concerned.