Saudi Arabia, Non Amour II

And the other story from Saudi ... another old topic, the abuse of maids in the Gulf but this time the BBC asked people with direct experience to write in. The email below, from an Indian doctor resident in Saudi is particularly interesting.

Another useful comment was from the head of a women's shelter in Dubai, who noted that they sent 100 women back to Ethiopia alone in a single month over the summer. From a country with a population of 1.3 million, that's a problem of some serious scale.

DR SHARMA, INDIAN NATIONAL, SAUDI ARABIA'I often treat household help brought to the clinic by their sponsors [employers].... They usually start by complaining of routine physical ailments, but after a little gentle questioning, one by one they talk about being abused sexually by the men in the family... Getting beaten and working 18 hours a day is almost routine....There is no way we can do anything about it. Saudi Arabia is the most starkly racist place you can have.... '

The Saudi citizens who wrote in were surprised and shocked. Must be a different Saudi Arabia, they thought. 'Saudi is a closed society, that's just the way it is.'

That's ok then.