In Sri Lanka's war-torn north and east, where killings happen every day and work is nearly nonexistent, it doesn't take much to entice a man to leave.
So when an employment agency offered a steady paycheck for laboring amid Dubai's soaring glass and steel towers, 17 young Sri Lankan men paid their fee to the job brokers -- US$2,000, a small fortune on this tropical island -- and signed up.
But instead of going to work, they were locked in a room guarded by a man with a pistol. They had been sold to another agency, they were told, for US$1,200 apiece.
It took them two weeks to realize where they were: Iraq.
"We knew Iraq was dangerous, and Sri Lanka was dangerous, but at least we thought our parents will get to see our corpses if we die here," said Krishnan Piraitheepan 32, shortly after returning to Sri Lanka this month with the help of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Geneva-based intergovernmental organization.
Thousands of Sri Lankans, and tens of thousands of other people from such poverty-battered countries as the Philippines, India and Nepal, go to the oil-rich Middle East every year to work. The pay, usually US$200 to US$400 a month, can be many times what they would earn at home, even after the agency fees that can leave families deeply indebted.
So they become maids in Kuwait, and drivers in Saudi Arabia. They work as nannies in Dubai and Bahrain.
Some, like the 17 Sri Lankans, end up in Iraq.
While there are no reliable statistics on forced labor in Iraq, government officials and aid groups warn the case highlights the potential for abuse. The situation is further distorted in Iraq, since a number of countries that are major labor suppliers to the Middle East, including Sri Lanka, ban their citizens from traveling there.
"This case should be an eye-opener to all of us, especially the governments and the job agencies," said Priyantha Kulatunge, an IOM official helping oversee the group's return.
Pratap Chatterjee, executive director of the California-based corporate watchdog CorpWatch, estimates only a small percentage of the 30,000 to 50,000 migrant workers in Iraq are there against their will -- but many more may not have realized what it means to work in a war zone.
"Many people have claimed to be trafficked," Chatterjee said. "Probably many were, probably others discovered a situation that was dangerous."
He worries more about workers' inability to leave. With some employers still holding employee passports -- a practice the US Defense Department has forbidden for its contractors since mid-last year -- leaving a job can be extremely difficult.
When the Sri Lankans arrived in Dubai in mid-December, they were met by a representative of Arabian Express, the Colombo-based company that arranged their jobs.
The man told them they would be working elsewhere in Dubai, and put them on another plane. There was a sign on arrival saying they had landed at Irbil Airport.
"I had no idea what country Irbil is in. The only city that I knew in Iraq was Baghdad," said Karunapandy Jeyaruban, 24.
The Sri Lankans' story is not uncommon. Since 2003, the IOM has evacuated more than 6,000 foreigners "in difficult situations" from Iraq.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion