"The ‘New’ Saudi Arabia Still Runs on ‘Modern-Day Slavery’"

Ahmed Abdul Majeed arrived in Saudi Arabia in 1981, a young Indian man joining the ranks of millions of migrant workers who, for all the kingdom’s vast oil wealth, are the other engine of the Saudi economy. He became a senior sales executive in Riyadh for the kingdom’s largest travel agency, Al Tayyar Travel…

After Abdul Majeed was abruptly fired in early 2020, what had been a mostly comfortable life as a white-collar foreign worker in Saudi Arabia turned into a nightmare because of the kafala system. Seera Group confiscated his passport and forced him to work without pay for six months to recover unpaid client fees—the company’s dues, not his. Eventually, he was forced to pay the debts himself, some $100,000 in all, which he could only do after selling his house and other assets back in India. Although he was finally able to leave Saudi Arabia later that year, he had to buy his own ticket home, “even though a flight back was part of my employment contract,” as Abdul Majeed told me…

Since Abdul Majeed worked for a company controlled by the Public Investment Fund, HRF said his abuse was evidence that the Saudi government “is explicitly complicit” in these exploitative labor practices. His case and others that HRF documented in Saudi Arabia…