"'Sexual assaults': Bangladesh seeks worker's return from Saudi", 3 November 2019

A total of 2,165 women workers have returned over the past 21 months after surviving in inhumane condition and another 87 female workers were brought dead.

In a Facebook video which has been shared thousands of times and prompted protests in Dhaka against workers' conditions, Sumi Akter alleged "merciless sexual assaults" by her Saudi employers.

"I perhaps won't live longer. Please save me. They locked me up for 15 days and barely gave me any food. They burned my hands with hot oil," the 25-year-old said.

...the government called on the state-run manpower exporting agency to bring Akter back home "as soon as possible"...

Since 1991, some 300,000 Bangladeshi women have travelled to the Gulf nation for work, according to the ministry of expatriates' welfare.

Those workers account for the largest amount of remittance sent back to...Bangladesh. 

Millions of Asians travel to the Gulf to work, according to Bangladesh's government, and human rights groups say many suffer exploitation and abuses with no channels for redress.

...Bangladeshi migrant rights group Ovibashi Karmi Unnayan Program said 61 percent of 110 women they interviewed who returned home, many from Saudi Arabia, claimed they were physically abused.

Some 14 percent said they were sexually abused, the group added.

Dhaka-based BRAC, one of the world's largest charities, said this year alone, the bodies of 48 female workers were brought back from Saudi Arabia.