Dubai's Dirty Little Secret

hot new mecca for tourists with the mind-boggling budget and they're spending it on the kind of amenities you never even dreamed were possible all to lure visitors like you so what's the problem well ABC's chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross uncovered a dirty secret Dubai a rare day in the life of an investigative reporter sitting in the backseat of a chauffeur-driven white Rolls Royce heading for what is billed as the world's tallest and most luxurious hotel the Burj Al Arab in Dubai when you look at the Burj it out of itself as a luxury property there's nothing to compare with it like much of this Persian Gulf city everything at the burj al arab hotel seems over-the-top expansive Lobby excessive service and extraordinary prices the cheapest room where we checked into the grounds of our 20/20 accountants is a $1,700 at night two floor suite complete with its own Butler breathtaking views and an in-room spa nice but nothing compared with the Royal suite upstairs eleven thousand dollars a night glamorized in the hotel's promotional video the bed revolve is 360 degrees if you wanted to and the bathrooms are as big as an oversized bedroom only the very best and most expensive will do here in virgin era if it looks like gold it is gold the hotel has become the architectural and public relations showpiece of Dubai it got the world's top tennis star's to play an exhibition match up on a Telepan and golf star Tiger Woods was lured up here to yet another coup and devised efforts to put its name on the world map in bold letters wouldn't want people to remember New York I want people to remember Chicago remember Paris London and Dubai a worldwide marketing campaign has drawn millions of Turks Europe Asia and the United States and billions of dollars in investments from big hotel companies listen let's come to Dubai we can see its sun sea sand shopping great restaurants wonderful my life it's one of those places I think you and your traveling the world you say I have to go to all being sold as a destination in the Mideast or even someone from the Midwest would feel comfortable the government has a a brand called the wire we are a growing city we are incredibly successful little happens in Dubai without the approval of the absolute monarch 57 year old Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Sheikh mo he's called he inherited the kingdom from his father and elder brother and is regarded as the driving force behind Dubai's newly polished image make no mistake about it he runs it from top to bottom a billionaire many times over sheikh bo has made it clear money is no object in Dubai at least when he says say for example Jake has made sure Dubai is the home to the world's richest horse wings with a six million dollar purse the track that rivals Churchill Downs in Kentucky and is the scene of the lavish champagne party Aska comes to Arabia you have to have your vision and you don't study other people without you the Sheikh has spent more than a billion dollars on horses in the last few years according to Jason Levine who wrote up he has the money he realizes the power of the money and he created a race out of nothing and billions more are being spent to create a city full of skyscrapers out of nothing - and as with his racehorses not just any skyscrapers will do when completed this will be the tallest building in the world twice the height of the Empire State Building according to its proud developer Muhammad Ali Al Abbar what was the statement you were making here and / building the tallest building it's an achievement that we are here he's not the stuff we want to be part of the world there's no end to Dubai's boom town spending to be the biggest or the best there now even creating islands in the sea out of nothing as well one development almost completed is designed to look like a palm tree from an aerial view homes on the palm are now said to be going for two to four million dollars apiece and this will be the site of a new Atlantis Hotel and waterpark you cannot come to Dubai and say I don't want to see the palm there was nothing there and the genius of the country says not only we're going to build something but they're delivering on that dream another clump of manmade islands will replicate a map of the world when seen from the air each Island a separate country average price 25 million dollars apiece Sheikh Mohammed's ability to get things done with a Royal Command is the envy of other entrepreneurs around the world he's way ahead of nahi virgin airlines founder Richard Branson has been drawn to Dubai in a big way his airline now flies here daily and he's even considering buying Great Britain the dubai island version that is it's unbelievable the amount of people that fly and go and visit device it's become a real a real Mecca next on the drawing boards is something called Dubai Land a five billion dollar theme park designed to be twice the size of Disneyworld already it's possible and Dubai to spend the morning at a very American looking water park and then head down the road to this strange looking to building cutting into the air it's an indoor ski mount in the Arabian desert even when the temperatures outside are at a hundred twenty degrees or more skiing inside is just fine this is truly a case of bringing the mountain to Mohammed Sheikh muhanad his model for device seems to be I had the vision and the money to build and do anything I want and he is but with that has come some new and very unwanted attention to the way business is done in Dubai attention to the treatment of the people who are actually building devised skyscrapers and fantasy spectacles something the Royal Palace and its high-powered public relations firms aren't so eager for the world to see there is a climate of things that are unspoken that's why an investigative reporter goes to debauch in the world of thoroughbred racing the ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed spared no expense and making himself a big man it is the sport of kings he's one of the few people in the game that treats it that way sheiks personal 747 is a familiar sight in Kentucky especially around the time of the country's premier Keeneland horse sale that's Sheikh Mohammed without his robes in the midst of a royal spending spree he and his brothers spent more than 70 million dollars on horses in just two days once back in Dubai horses will live in royal splendor in his majesty stables money talks in his case he's happy to throw it around the Sheikh taking the same no-expense-spared approach to promoting Dubai around the world including former President Bill Clinton have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to speak or act as consultants President Bush's brother Neil was a guest of the royal family last year the Sheikh and his ministers say Dubai is a shining example of what can go right in the Middle East Dubai is slowly becoming the cosmopolitan global city here in the Middle East in the Arab world and is - by grows from desert town to boom town again no expenses being spared and this is it this is our little more than here just putting up the world's tallest building is not enough I think we'd like to be not only the tallest in the world but the best quality building ever built by that this is the chairman of the company building the tower Mohamed Ali Al Abbar showed us a mock-up of a seventy third floor apartment that will be a sleek and elegant as the finest apartments anywhere in the world and we all want the same things we all aspire to be somebody the building will be twice this height when completed next year all going up at the rate of one new floor every four days all being built it turns out by workers who on average make less than a dollar an hour it's clear that workers are being abused they're working for virtual slave wages behind the glitzy world of Dubai are some five hundred thousand foreign workers human rights groups say live in virtual enslavement that is how these new fancy buildings are being built a report out just this week from the group Human Rights Watch concludes workers putting up dubai soaring towers are being systematically abused and cheated with the sheiks government looking the other way Hadi ghaemi and Sara Lee whitson prepared the report you're working in a system when you're not really free to leave your job you actually need your employer's consent to try to change jobs you're working in a system where your passport is withheld and really if you displease your employer you're gonna find yourself on a plane right back to Sri Lanka or Bangladesh or Pakistan or India most of the workers live in labor camps an hour outside the city in the desert in a place called sauna port which means city of gold there's little gold to be found here then putting up the world's finest buildings live six to eight sometimes 12 to a room rooms smaller than the horse stalls in the sheiks royal stables when we arrived the men said it was one of the few times outsiders with cameras had been in the camps and we wanted to know if His Royal Highness Sheikh Mohammed had ever been here I have no you know I cannot confirm to you yet I think he would find that his horses have better living conditions than those men I think that's not a fair comment dr. Anwar Gargash the one and only government minister provided to speak with 20/20 says Dubai and the Sheikh are doing the best they can I've been to more than one labor camp in sana port would you want to live that way and I think some of them are not bad and I think some of them are very bad we're at camps this week they described as pretty good yeah and they're quite squalid okay 812 men in the room they're working 12-hour days but this is the guy proud of that no no of course not we have why do you allowed to continue because the pace of growth has outstripped our ability and I think like any any city any any country we of course have growing pains pains being felt by these men trapped in indentured servitude they told us they were deeply in debt because they were forced to pay recruiters in their home countries large fees to get their jobs in Dubai something that is supposed to be illegal and once here they said they found they would be making only half the wages they had been promised 600 600 Dara about a hundred sixty three dollars a month on average less than a dollar an hour and even that Human Rights Watch found is routinely withheld months at a time it's that a way to make sure that your worker doesn't run away so you kind of always owe him money to keep him on a short leash the work in Dubai goes on day and night usually to 12-hour shifts six days a week pace Human Rights Watch says has led to a huge death toll hundreds of them are dying especially from falling from these high-rises every year you're saying hundreds of died hundreds of times and under the law in Dubai and the entire United Arab Emirates there are no unions allowed strikes are illegal strikers can be fired and sent home so basically you better shut up and do your work and not complain you talk about setting high standards where's the high standard for that for the workers but naturally naturally we realize very well that we are actually in a state of transition so to come and say we have a problem of course we do as it stands today are they receiving fair treatment I think we have a problem I think we have a problem do you admit that I think we have a problem but but it's not like we're not doing anything about it in fact just days after we left Dubai the royal public relations machine was in high gear announcing new efforts to enforce labor laws and improve conditions at labor camps at long last Dubai's impoverished workers may finally be getting the same attention as the sheiks skyscrapers and famed racehorses you

Channel: gwapojoe

Views: 7,615,945

Rating: 4.0272198 out of 5

Keywords: Dubai, slave, labor, Islam

Id: UUW9MWLIQYw

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2007

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

For those interested here's a BBC report on the issue. BBC's panorama did a film on it called 'Panorama: Slumdogs and Millionaires' which i can't find a link for. Much of the footage was re-edited into a discussion doc for vice news with the reporter Ben Anderson and Vice's Shane Smith 'Slaves of Dubai'.

Earlier this year there were strikes by workers,

The camp where Ashraf lives with some 2,500 Arabtec employees is located in Sonapur or the "land of God", a series of dusty streets and barracks-style labour camps guarded by private security and home to about 200,000 workers. - source

True to their word it many workers were deported

Thousands of workers stayed away from work from Saturday in a rare labor protest in Dubai where trade unions are banned.

"This unwarranted stoppage had been instigated by a minority group who will be held accountable for their actions," Arabtec said in a statement on Dubai's bourse earlier on Wednesday.

Police chief Dahi Khalfan said about 200 workers who took part in the protests had been taken into custody in preparation for being sent home at their own request.

Arabtec was among the contractors that built Dubai's palm-shaped island projects and the world's tallest tower, the Burj Khalifa.

Police were called into Arabtec worker accommodation on Monday after laborers refused to report for work.

Khalfan said 200 workers had said they no longer wanted to work for Arabtec and asked to be repatriated.

-source

[u/kingvitaman]

Welcome to East Texas!

But honestly, this doc is a nice contrast to the "make me a German". It's generally the short sided and authoritarian nature of these types of mega rich that always spells their demise. If you take care of your workers, and give them a living wage, guess what? They actually make the country richer. Sure, one guy might not be able to spend a billion on horses, but you'll remembered much longer as a leader by bringing up the whole population instead of just being a sycophant for the rich.

Oh. And those islands they built? They're sinking. In a century, once the oil runs out, they'll be about as remembered as Constantinople.

[u/Eurasian-HK]

Capitalism is now considered a dirty little secret?

I wonder what 20/20 would think about slavery then? Or how who does the harvesting in California? Or what about the exploited workers in american factories overseas?

OMG Dubai Bashing its so 2000 and late