Shahadat left for Saudi Arabia from his village in Bangladesh with a single purpose: to earn money to help his impoverished family: “If he managed to send remittances home, his family would be able to eat. If he couldn’t send money, his family wouldn’t eat,” explains a relative.
For years he barely survived, sending a little money home each month and trying to pay off the huge debt he incurred in order to pay the illegal commission that a recruiting agent had charged him for arranging his work permit. Then, the situation began to go wrong. An employer did not renew his residence permit, making him an undocumented worker. He began to have health problems, but since he was in an irregular situation it would have been difficult for him to receive medical attention.
He had a hard time finding work. Instead of sending remittances to his family, he had to borrow more money to survive. He was so desperate that he took construction jobs in exchange for only food and lodging. And then his odyssey came to a sudden end. “One day I called him on the phone and his roommate told me that he was sleeping,” says Rojina, Shahadat’s wife: “When they tried to wake him up, they discovered that he was dead.”
Shahadat’s death was one of many stories shared with the Guardian this year as the newspaper investigated the high number of unexplained deaths of Bangladeshi migrant workers in Saudi Arabia.
In 2022, an average of four Bangladeshis died in the country every day. It’s unclear whether that death rate is within expectations given the number of Bangladeshis working in Saudi Arabia — about 2 million — but the country’s ambitious plans to host the 2034 World Cup are likely. require an increase in demand for workers like Shahadat.
In recent months, a large number of human rights organizations have expressed concern about alleged abuses of migrant workers and have warned of the risks of awarding the World Cup to Saudi Arabia. Amnesty International has stated that “migrant workers will suffer exploitation and many will die.”
The high number of fatalities was evident at Dhaka International Airport late last year, where distraught and confused families came to collect the coffins carrying the bodies of their loved ones as they were wheeled out of the warehouse on trolleys. burden.
An ambulance transported Shahadat’s coffin from the airport to his village, about a three-hour drive from Dhaka. The ambulance arrived at night, but a crowd of more than 100 people had stayed up to meet it. Every household in their village had a family member working in another country, so the death of one of them weighed on everyone.
It is a scene that is repeated with heartbreaking frequency in towns and cities across Bangladesh. According to Bangladesh Government records, at least 13,685 Bangladeshis died in Saudi Arabia between 2008 and 2022. Most deaths appear unexplained and unexamined, making it difficult to establish underlying causes.
Experts have pointed to the harsh living and working conditions that many workers face as likely determining factors. “I think the mental pressure of not having the documents in order, not having a job and having to face his debts influenced his death,” says Rojina, Shahadat’s widow.
Saudi Arabia is a country that not only feeds on oil, but also on cheap labor. Millions of workers arrive from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and other countries. They will build the promised 11 new stadiums, transportation networks and 185,000 hotel rooms. Without them there would be no World Cup.
Saudi Arabia’s human rights strategy, presented as part of its World Cup bid, includes a long list of measures it says it will take to strengthen protection, including “mandatory welfare standards.”
However, testimonies from Bangladeshi workers who have returned to their country suggest that abuses are deeply rooted in the Gulf kingdom. Late last year, at the arrivals gate at Dhaka airport, men like Abu Raihan emerged with dismayed faces. He was one of nearly 70,000 Bangladeshis expelled from Saudi Arabia in 2022, mostly for lacking a valid residence permit.
They are detained on the streets and taken to detention centers where they usually remain between one and two weeks before being sent to their country. They bring with them stories of appalling treatment and abuse, false contracts, unpaid wages and large debts incurred during the hiring process.
Raihan claims that he had to sell his land to pay the recruitment fee of 430,000 taka (about 3,000 euros) to obtain his work visa in Saudi Arabia. He says that they promised him a two-year contract, but after 90 days the company did not extend his visa.
Without work and without food, Raihan reports that he went to the police to complain, but instead of helping him, they took him to a detention center. “I became illegal because of my employer, but the police did not take any action against him,” he laments.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development has stated that there are “strict rules and regulations to protect workers’ rights” and that the country “only repatriates those who have been proven to have violated labor and residence regulations after take all legal measures to verify their violations and coordinate with the embassies of their countries.”
Translation by Emma Reverter
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