2023-06-28 03:37:27
1 hour ago
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We start presenting the most important British newspapers with a report in the Guardian newspaper on human rights demands to take urgent measures to protect Kenyan domestic workers in the Gulf countries.
The author of the report, Caroline Kimio, said that the increasing deaths and alleged abuses of Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia prompted Nairobi to work to ensure the human rights of women who travel to work in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
Rights groups have expressed concern that insufficient efforts have been made to address alleged mistreatment of domestic workers in Gulf countries, such as Saudi Arabia, following the Kenyan government’s move to secure job opportunities for its nationals abroad.
“This is a serious public interest issue. Many of our Kenyan citizens have been abused and dying there. There is an urgent need for protection,” said John Muriri, a lawyer with legal aid group Ketu Cha Cherrya.
Despite the lack of recent data on the deaths of Kenyan migrant workers, the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that at least 89 citizens, most of them domestic workers, lost their lives in Saudi Arabia between 2020 and 2021.
Keto Cha Cherya and another human rights group, Hakigami, are supporting the prosecution of the Kenyan government by nearly a dozen domestic workers who previously worked in the Gulf states, alleging that the government failed to take adequate measures to protect them from “modern slavery and human trafficking.”
The workers in the case, already filed in early February, alleged that the Kenyan government “neglected” to investigate many cases of death and abuse. The government is due to provide its response within the next two months.
Saudi Arabia is an important source of remittances to Kenya. Migrant workers in the kingdom reportedly sent nearly £237m to their families in Kenya last year.
Kenya suffers from high rates of unemployment, so the government is actively seeking to create job opportunities locally and internationally. And for Kenya’s President, William Ruto, who came to power promising better opportunities for low-income Kenyans, the issue could become a yardstick for his administration’s success.
The president planned to sign several new bilateral agreements, which he announced last month, as part of a push to enable more Kenyan workers to find opportunities abroad, whether in Europe, North America and the Middle East.
image copyrightJoost Bastmeijer/The Guardian
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Kenyan women learn housekeeping skills to prepare them for work in Saudi Arabia at the East African Institute of Home Care Management near Nairobi.
The signing of agreements with Saudi Arabia has alarmed rights groups, who fear that horrific reports of domestic workers in the Gulf state have not been adequately addressed.
In its lawsuit, the human rights organization called for an “immediate suspension” of transferring Kenyan workers to the Middle East to ensure the fulfillment of their “basic minimum” needs, and demanded compensation for the victims or their families.
The newspaper quoted the testimony of Purity Mbogo, 33, and revealed that in 2020, she was looking for work and heard about a teaching job in Qatar, but later realized what terrified her, which was that the employment agency had made her work in housekeeping in Saudi Arabia, instead of that.
In her written testimony before the court, seen by the Guardian, Mbogo claims her phone and passport were confiscated upon her arrival, leaving her unable to communicate with her family for several months. She says she was hit with a hot iron when she complained about not having her phone, and was able to return to Kenya in late 2020, after her family helped her out of Saudi Arabia.
Some women revealed that they were subjected to physical and sexual abuse while working in the Gulf countries. The Kenyan embassy in Saudi Arabia also “closed its doors” in their face and did not help them in their plight, “forcing them to be detained in deportation centers and agency accommodation centres, where life was degrading to human beings”.
Putin ‘more dangerous’
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Putin fears the fate of Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi, which might push him to use nuclear weapons
The Telegraph warned that Putin’s Russia is far from over, and may become more dangerous than the West thinks.
Cheryl Jacobs said, in an article in the newspaper, that Russia still poses an existential threat to the West, and the “coup” of Wagner’s mercenaries may have increased this threat.
She explained that since the fall of the Soviet Union, two scenarios about the end of the world dominate the imagination of the West. The first is due to climate change, which will cause our planet to explode in a punishing conflagration. The other is that we are on the cusp of inventing an artificial intelligence that will choose to destroy humanity after making some impenetrable cost-benefit calculations.
She pointed out that the failed coup by the Wagner Group was not met with fear nor with a sober assessment of the potential repercussions. Much of the West looked on with awe, some confidently declaring the end of the Putin era, but then there was skepticism and anxiety when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner commander, halted his rebellion.
Despite the war in Ukraine, the West does not care much about the idea that the Russian elite may be the cause of the end of the world. Wagner’s rebellion destroyed Putin’s power. Military morale has been seriously damaged, and Putin may have no choice but to redirect resources to prevent further insurgencies at home.
The author asked: Are we really confident that the threat has basically ended? Are we sure that the Kremlin has been neutralized by its incompetence? Or could Saturday be a turning point of a much more serious kind?
Putin knows that his political situation is coming to an end, and that this tempts him to escalate the Ukraine war in a way that already risks igniting another world war. What Putin fears most is that he is approaching a horrific end similar to Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi. It is believed that he went mad with rage at Gaddafi’s death, as he watched footage of his violent death.
Now, with Wagner’s leader threatening his authority, and the International Criminal Court issuing a warrant for his arrest, one can only wonder if this ending came from good for Putin.
If that is the case, he may be tempted to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine in a desperate attempt to change the dynamics of the war in his favour. Indeed, we must take very seriously his transfer of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus and the pursuit of new and upgraded ranges of nuclear missiles.
The most expensive painting in Europe
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The painting was sold for £85.3m in just ten minutes
The painting “The Fan Bearer” or the Lady of the Fan set a record to become the most expensive work of art in Europe, after it was sold at auction for about 85 million pounds sterling.
The British newspaper The Times said that the last portrait of the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, who died in 1918, became the most expensive work of art sold in Europe at the Sotheby’s auction house in London.
The painting, a portrait of an unknown woman, sold for £85.3m after a ten-minute competition between four bidders, fetching £10m above estimates.
The auction was won by Patty Wong, an art consultant, on behalf of a Hong Kong collector. Wong, the former head of Thawsby, launched her Asia-focused company in January.
The painting was Klimt’s last and was found on an easel when the Austrian artist died of a stroke and pneumonia in 1918 at the age of 55.
The identity of the woman was unknown, although it has been suggested that she may have been one of Klimt’s regular paid models, Joanna Stud.
The value placed on Klimt’s paintings has risen in recent years. He is now one of those rare artists whose works have sold for more than $100 million, along with Picasso, Pollock and Giacometti.
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