Slavery in the Trucial States
The region was mainly supplied with enslaved people from the Indian Ocean slave trade, but humans were also trafficked to the area from Hejaz, Oman and Persia.
[1] Slavery of people from Africa and East Asia was succeeded by the modern Kafala system of poor workers from the same region where slaves had previously been imported.
From Oman, the slaves were exported to the rest of the Arabian Peninsula and Persia, including the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
The historical records show that most slaves in the pearl industry of the Persian Gulf were shipped from either the East African Swaihili Coast or the Horn of Africa.
[4] A second route of slave trade existed, with people from both Africa and East Asia, who were smuggled to Jeddah in the Arabian Peninsula in connection to the Muslim pilgrimage, Hajj, to Mecca and Medina.
Victims were tricked to perform the journey willingly in the belief that they were going on the Hajj pilgrimage or employed as servants and then sold upon arrival.
[5] In 1927 a trial reveal a slave trade organization in which Indian children of both sexes were trafficked to Oman and Dubai via Persia and Gwadar.
[6] In the 1940s, a third slave trade route was noted, in which Balochis from Balochistan were shipped across the Persian Gulf, many of whom had sold themselves or their children to escape poverty.
[8] Of 283 female slaves who applied for manumission from their Arab owners at the British Agency in Sharjah, 151 were African (25 from Eastern Africa, 8 from Sudan, 2 from Somalia, and 126 born in Arabia by African slave parents), and of the remaining number, 46 were from Baluchistan, all of them having been captured and trafficked in their own lifetime and not born in slavery.
[12] It was common for Arab men to use the sexual services of enslaved African women, but a male African slave who had sexual relations with a local "pure blood" Arab woman would be executed to preserve tribal honour and social status, regardless if the couple had married or not.
[17] The British Foreign Office repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked the Iraq Petroleum Company not to employ slaves, but was met with the reply that it was the responsibility of the shaykhs to supply the workers.
[21] Non-African female slaves were sold in the Persian Gulf where they were bought for marriage; these were fewer and often Armenian, Georgian, or from Baluchistan and India.
As was the case with the rest of the Gulf states, the British considered their control over the region insufficient to do much about slavery and the slave trade.
[27] The British publicly burned a slave dhow in Dubai as a warning in 1928 and the shaykhs, particularly the shaykh of Qatar, expressed themselves willing to enforce the formal treaty obligations; but in reality, this was impossible, and the British reported that the indigenous authorities were "fanatical, backward, and intensely suspicious of any European interference, which they regard as a threat to their liberties".
[27] In both 1932 and 1935, the British colonial authorities refused to interfere in the slavery of the Trucial States, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, since they were afraid that they could lose control over the area if they should attempt to enforce a policy against slavery, and they therefore prevented all international observation of the area which could force them to take action.
[31] In 1936, the British finally acknowledged to the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery of the League of Nations that there was still ongoing slavery and a slave trade in the Trucial States, Oman and Qatar, but claimed that it was limited, and that all slaves who sought asylum at the British Agents Office in Sharjah were granted manumission.
[32] In reality, the British reports were deliberately playing down the size of the actual substantial slave trade going on in the region.
[32] After World War II, there was a growing international pressure from the United Nations to end the slave trade.
After the Independence of India in 1947, the British Foreign Office secured direct control over the Trucial States and for the first time considered itself to have sufficient control to enforce the laws against slavery and slave trade, particularly since a bigger international presence in the Gulf States attracted more attention to the slavery, and a stronger international condemnation against it.
In 1948, the United Nations declared slavery to be a crime against humanity in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, after which the Anti-Slavery Society pointed out that there were about one million slaves in the Arabian Peninsula, which was a crime against the 1926 Slavery Convention, and demanded that the UN form a committee to handle the issue.
Former slaves were given citizenship in 1971, and genetic studies reveal that the population of certain regions of the Persian Gulf have a significance of West African haplotypes.
When the Soviet Union broke up, thousands of Eastern European women become prostitutes in China, Western Europe, Israel, and Turkey every year.
A new work permit is also issued if the employer fails legal and contractual obligations such as not paying wages for 60 days.
6 of 1973 on the Entry and Residence of aliens, an employer may not deny an employee on a work visa right to an annual leave, regular paid wage, 45 days maternity leave, right to resign, resign gratuity, and a 30-day grace period to find a new job.
