Racism in Saudi Arabia

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Saudis jail, deport foreigners with HIV
By MARK MACKINNON
Tuesday, August 9, 2005From Tuesday's Globe and Mail

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia — Mohammed spends his days in a crowded cage, dying ofa treatable disease for which the richest country in the Middle East won'tprovide medicines.

The Palestinian is HIV positive and has been kept in a cell at the King SaudHospital for Infectious Diseases for three months, along with two roommateswho also are infected with the virus. They live behind a brown steel doorwith barred windows, victims of a closed society that would rather deportpeople, such as Mohammed, than talk about sex, drug use or AIDS.

Saudi Arabia can afford the antiretroviral medication that slows the spreadof HIV and often prolongs the life of those infected, and does give thedrugs to Saudi nationals who have contracted the illness. It refuses,however, to extend the same treatment to the more than 4,200 foreigners inthe country who have tested positive for HIV.

Foreign workers, many of whom hail from South Asia and come to Saudi Arabialooking for better-paying jobs than they could find back home, make up 25per cent of the country's population, and 54 per cent of those known to haveHIV.

Burly and hale-looking despite his illness, Mohammed said the onlymedications he has received in the past three months are basic painrelievers and anti-allergy pills. He says he was allowed out of his cell -- which is bolted and padlocked from the outside -- just once in recent weeks.

That time, he said, he was put into an ambulance and taken to finish hisdeportation proceedings. When it was determined the necessary documents werenot yet ready, he was driven back to the hospital and again locked up.

"We are prisoners here. They treat us like animals," Mohammed said during ashort discussion of his circumstances through the bars of his cage beforehospital security guards arrived and ended the interview.

There was another, gaunt-looking African man in the caged hospital room -- who also has AIDS -- and Mohammed said all foreigners with AIDS were treatedthe same way. There are often six people in the caged ward at the same time,he said. "They say we're dangerous, so we can't go out. We get no medicinesat all.

"When The Globe and Mail returned the next day, it was impossible to speak toMohammed. The wing of the hospital where the caged foreigners with AIDS arekept, which was open to visitors the day before, was suddenly under guard bytriple the number of security guards.

Mohammed said one of his former cellmates, a man named Ismael who was bornin Saudi Arabia to illegal immigrants and thus considered a non-citizen, wasdeported to Myanmar (formerly called Burma) recently after being kept underlock and key for a year without access to antiretrovirals.

One doctor at the hospital, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Ismaeland Mohammed were both lucky and have survived thus far because they areyoung and arrived at the hospital while still relatively healthy. Manyothers, he said, died in front of him while awaiting their deportation, aninfuriating experience for a medical professional who knew he could do moreto help them.

Like Mohammed, he said foreigners with AIDS who arrived at King Saud weretreated like "prisoners, not patients."

"They get no medicine, no care, nothing. I tried my best, I talked to thedirector of the hospital about this many times. They told me: 'These are therules of the country. You cannot change this.' "

The doctor said since Saudi Arabia treats its own citizens who contract HIVreasonably well, the lack of care given to foreigners with AIDS can beattributed to racism alone.

Doctors say the antiretroviral medication costs the equivalent of about$1,500 a month a person.

The country views AIDS as an imported phenomenon, and in a 2004 report theMinistry of Health said Saudi Arabia's policy for dealing with foreignerswith AIDS is to treat them until they are stable enough to be deported.

The low number of AIDS cases in the country is frequently attributed to thekingdom's strict Islamic laws, which prohibit premarital sex, relationsoutside marriage and homosexuality. Penalties for adultery and drug useinclude imprisonment, public stoning or beheading.

Saudi Arabia's economy is heavily reliant on foreign labourers, whononetheless have few rights and are treated as an underclass. The largestnumber have settled in Jeddah, a vibrant port city of 2.8 million peoplenear Islam's holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Unknown thousands live inrundown neighbourhoods and makeshift refugee camps where intravenous druguse and prostitution -- almost unheard of in the rest of the country -- havebecome rampant. Over half of the country's reported AIDS cases are inJeddah.

Many of those who end up at the King Saud hospital work in the country foryears beforehand and only discover they have AIDS when they're brought tohospital after a workplace or traffic accident. There, they receive amandatory HIV test. After that, they're forcibly taken to hospital andconfined there to await deportation or death, whichever comes first.

Wealthier foreign workers, such as oil-industry specialists and educationprofessionals, are unlikely to use Saudi Arabia's public health-care systemand thereby avoid the scrutiny of the government.

How long those locked up with AIDS remain inside the hospital often dependson their nationality. Some countries, such as the Philippines, moverelatively quickly to take their nationals home for treatment. But in caseslike Ismael's and Mohammed's, where the patient hails from a country withlittle or no diplomatic presence in Saudi Arabia, the wait is much longer.

Christoph Wilcke, Saudi Arabia researcher for the New York-based HumanRights Watch, said this was the first time he had heard about the practiceof jailing and withholding medication from the country's foreigners with HIVand AIDS. He called the practice "despicable."