[size=14pt]Ugandan women tricked into domestic slavery in Iraq[/size]
By Anna Cavell
Kampala
The BBC has the first detailed accounts of how Ugandan women ended up in domestic slavery in Iraq, and the extraordinary story of their rescue.

At least 100 of the Ugandan women who went to Iraq in 2009 remain unaccounted for
Prossie was working as a schoolteacher when she heard an attractive advert on Ugandan radio.

A Kampala company called Uganda Veterans Development Ltd was recruiting women to work for high wages in shops in US Army bases in Iraq.

She signed up, along with 146 other Ugandan women.

But when she arrived in Baghdad, she discovered that she had been bought by an Iraqi agent for $3,500 (£2,200). Her real job was as a housemaid for an Iraqi family.

Like many others, she was forced to work long hours, sometimes from 5am until midnight. She often received little food or water and she was locked inside the house.

"It was a lot of work because Iraqis have this dust, the sand storms, it keeps on falling, so you have to keep on cleaning from morning until you sleep," Prossie said.


[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51912000/jpg/_51912357_006(2).jpg[/img]
Sam Tumwesigye and Lt Col Theodore Lockwood rescued 14 Ugandan women


Rape
When Prossie protested, her employer told her: "We paid a lot of money for you and we were told that you people don't get sick and you don't get tired. So you have to work."

Prossie was raped by the man in the house. Several other trafficked Ugandan women we spoke to were raped too.

"I felt so sad and I had no way out. I really hated everything in the house," she said. "It was psychological torture."

On the other side of Baghdad, at an American military base, a Ugandan security contractor called Samuel Tumwesigye heard what was happening to these women.

He called one of them, Agnes, on a mobile phone she had hidden, and promised to help her.

"The first thing I did was go to my bedroom and pray to God," Mr Tumwesigye said. "I thought: 'Please, I'm going to start this. Let me succeed.'"

He told Agnes that if she could escape from the house and get to the Flying Man statue close to Baghdad Airport he would rescue her.

Escape
Agnes had no passport, very little money and she spoke no Arabic. But she had been told that she was soon to be moved to Syria and she believed this was her only chance of escaping.

Exporting labour earned Uganda $500m a year, at its peak in 2009
Most of the workers sent abroad are men, only a small minority are women
A women's rights organisation, FIDA-U, has filed a court case against Uganda Veterans Development Ltd
An earlier attempt to sue the company failed when the lawyer pulled out


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12887018

Arabs just cant resist trying to enslave black people. They still enslave people in Mauritania.

I wonder what kind of brain you have, pleep! it probably pleeps all the time.

dell_net:

I wonder what kind of brain you have, pleep! it probably pleeps all the time.

i wonder what kind of brain you have dell net! probably not as good as a dell computer.

see, i can make bad jokes also.

pleep!

dell_net:

I wonder what kind of brain you have, pleep! it probably pleeps all the time.

Why attack pleep? He is right. Arabs still enslave Africans not only in Mauritania but also in Sudan as well.

Eze I am very sure in your palace there are slaves. . .

and oh without paycheck.