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>From the New York Post -- http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/68748.htm SAUDI SLAVERY IN AMERICA by Joel Mowbray AS part of its massive PR offensive, the House of Saud is trying to convince the world that its treatment of women is improving. But a first-hand witness would see a far different reality: Women locked inside homes, paid little or nothing as domestic servants, worked up to 20 hours per day, and verbally and physically abused. And that's right here in America - in the homes of Saudis living in the United States. Worse, the State Department knows all about it, and in effect protects this de facto slavery. Saudi abuse of domestics occasionally makes news in the Western press - but only when it happens outside of the kingdom. The Saudi princess who pushed her Indonesian maid down a flight of stairs in Orlando, Fla. won some notoriety last summer, but the case fizzled: State refused to give a visa to the victim (who had traveled home to Indonesia for her mother's funeral) to testify in the criminal trial. The prosecution's case crumbled without the star witness - so in a plea bargain, government lawyers had drop the charge of indentured servitude. Tens of thousands of women are abused in Saudi Arabia each year. The Saudi government admits that some 19,000 domestic servants - almost exclusively foreign women working in the kingdom as maids - escaped from Saudi homes in the 12 months prior to March 2001. (The real figure is likely far higher, because the Saudis only count women who go to government-run shelters for "runaway" domestics, which human-rights experts view as no more than a PR ploy.) Women who show up at Saudi police stations seeking help are jailed until their employers reclaim them. It doesn't get any better when Saudis bring their domestics along to America. Here are just two of the two dozen such women I've interviewed: * "Jamila" discovered a cyst in her right breast - but her Saudi employers wouldn't let her see a doctor. It wasn't until the young Filipina escaped the Northern Virginia house more than two years later - when the cyst had grown to four inches - that she could seek medical attention. * "Maryam," whose Saudi masters took her to a college town in Illinois, was passed around like mere property to friends and relatives of the employers. Denied a bed, she was forced to sleep on the hard floor in a cramped basement room. Saudi domestics in the United States don't have access to an underground railroad like the type that exists in Saudi Arabia - women there often hide in the trunks of cars on the way to a safe house or a port city - but thankfully many come into contact with Good Samaritans like Cielo, a Filipina woman who helped five different women escape from a single Saudi diplomat's home in a four-year period. Each time, Cielo - who worked as a maid down the street - persuaded the women that it was both acceptable and possible to flee. After prepping them, she would pull around the cul de sac in her van, stopping in front of the Saudis' house. The women then darted out to the van - and freedom. Women abused in Saudi homes on U.S. soil need heroes like Cielo, because they receive no help from the State Department - even though officials there know what happens behind closed Saudi doors. Diplomatic Security (DS), State's law-enforcement arm, has received "many" calls from police stations over the years about Saudi diplomats abusing domestic workers, says a DS officer who insisted on anonymity. But State refuses to provide oversight or inform domestic workers of their rights. Notes Keith Roderick, president of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights, who personally helped a woman escape a Saudi home: "When you meet these women and hear their horror stories, it breaks your heart. But after you think about it, it gets you angry, really angry - because State should be doing something about this, but then they turn a cold shoulder to women who want nothing more than to live free." Joel Mowbray is a reporter for National Review. Adapted from the Feb. 24 NR. 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