Day: April 11, 2017

South Asian migrants powering the construction boom in oil-rich Gulf countries are often illegally made to pay for their own recruitment, adding to hardships of poor working conditions and wages, according to an investigation released Tuesday.

Millions of migrants seeking a way out of poverty by working in Gulf nations from Qatar to the United Arab Emirates must routinely pay fees that can equal a year’s salary, U.S. researchers said in a report.

“Recruitment is not free,” said report co-author David Segall of New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. “Somebody does have to bear these costs, but that of course should be the employing company.”

The findings came as conditions for construction workers from India, Nepal and Bangladesh in the 2022 FIFA World Cup host, Qatar, have drawn scrutiny from rights groups who say migrants live in squalor and work without proper access to water and shelter.

In five fact-finding missions to the Gulf and South Asia, the researchers found workers are typically made to pay for their airfare from South Asia and their work visa, often at inflated prices.

Selling visas for profit is illegal in the six Gulf countries the researchers investigated — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. But violations rarely lead to prosecution and punishment, the report said.

Fees highest for Bangladeshis

Bangladeshi workers paid as much as $5,200 in recruitment fees, according to the study, the highest price among other South Asian construction workers, who number some 10 million people in the Gulf.

In rare cases, construction companies took on expenditures to recruit their workers, the study found. The fees had the effect of pushing already destitute migrants further into poverty by tying them to high-interest loans.

“These are people who are already desperate enough that they feel that they need to undertake this journey, leave their families in order to just achieve the possibility of economic success,” Segall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “For them to be in debt before they even start this journey is really an injustice.”

Reports of abuse of migrant domestic workers have prompted countries such as Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Indonesia to ban their citizens in recent years from seeking jobs in the Middle East.

The New York University report expanded on the findings of an investigation conducted in Qatar and released last week, which concluded hundreds of Asian workers had paid recruitment fees.
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“No one should ever be treated this way,” reads part of a new public statement issued Tuesday by United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz, following Sunday’s incident when a passenger was bloodied after being dragged off an overbooked United airliner at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

“I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight,” the Munoz statement also says.

The incident has gone viral through social media after being captured on other passengers’ cell phones.

Munoz added that the company will conduct a review of how the airline handles overbooking situations and how it interacts with airport authorities and law enforcement. He said the company will release the results of its review April 30.

Munoz released two earlier statements staunchly supporting the crew, saying in a statement late Monday that United attendants “followed established procedures” when the passenger was forcibly removed.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said President Donald Trump has seen what Spicer describes as the “troubling” video recorded on the United Airlines flight. Besides the global social media firestorm, the incident also has stirred up threats of a boycott.

Spicer told reporters at a White House briefing Tuesday the incident was “unfortunate” but does “not necessarily need a federal response,” adding there are “plenty” of law enforcement agencies available to conduct an investigation.

Because the Chicago to Louisville flight was overbooked, the crew asked passengers to voluntarily take another flight in exchange for financial compensation. According to media reports, the airline needed to make room for four of its employees.

No one volunteered, so the airline randomly selected four people, one of whom refused to leave – resulting in his forced removal by three men who were identified as Chicago aviation security officers.

Video showing the man, who appeared to be of Chinese descent, being dragged from the plane and later returning with a bloodied face was widely circulated on social media, drawing angry reactions. One passenger, Audra Bridges, who posted video of the incident, said the passenger was very upset when he was chosen and explained he was a physician who needed to get home in order to see patients the next morning. Bridges said the man appeared disoriented when he ran back onto the aircraft moments later.

Crew members eventually ordered everyone off the plane and did not let them return until the injured passenger was removed again on a stretcher.

Bridges said the passengers were “shocked and appalled” at the incident, which prompted threats of a boycott as the busy summer travel season begins.

The online backlash intensified when CEO Munoz used the euphemism “re-accommodate” in a Twitter posting Monday to describe the forcible removal of the passenger. Munoz. However, he also said the airline was reaching out to the passenger “to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situation.”

In the letter to employees, Munoz said the passenger “raised his voice and refused to comply” when he was initially asked to leave, and became “more disruptive and belligerent” in response to subsequent requests.

Crew members had “no choice” except to call Chicago Aviation Security officers to help remove the passenger, Munoz wrote.

In a statement late Monday, the Chicago Department of Aviation said the incident was “not in accordance with our standard operating procedure and the actions of the aviation security officers are obviously not condoned by the department.”

The statement added one officer involved has been placed on administrative leave, pending a review of the incident.

Munoz admitted to employees that the airline could learn from the incident but reiterated on his support of his employees’ actions. “I emphatically stand behind all of you,” he wrote.

Sunday’s incident follows another controversial occurrence in late March in which two girls, one estimated to be about 10 years old, were prevented from boarding a flight in Denver because they were wearing leggings, a violation of the airline’s dress code under a program for United employees.

The negative publicity may be adversely affecting the value of the airline. United’s stock price dropped nearly 4 percent during late morning trading Tuesday in New York, but by the close of the market it had dropped only about 1.1 percent.

For United Airlines, a global carrier that launched nonstop service to China in 1986, and bills itself as offering “more nonstop U.S.-China flights” to more cities in China “than any other airline,” comments on China’s lively social media were just one more problem Tuesday.

One commentator said: “Reading the news of the United Airlines’ violent removal of a passenger reminds me of three nightmarish trips with United Airlines. [It] provides the world’s worst service ever, not just one of the worst.”

Another commented: “I would like to give the passenger thumbs up. Although lots of American Chinese are discriminated against, they are afraid of speaking out due to [losing] face.”

Tourists’ remarks

VOA’s Mandarin service interviewed some Chinese tourists visiting Washington.

“I feel very angry. I feel this shouldn’t have happened in the U.S.,” said Xiaotian Liu. “It happened to be an Asian-American. I do not think they had a target.”

“I hope [United Airlines] can improve its service after this incident,” said Liu. “We will probably choose different airlines next time.”

“We happened to fly [United Airlines] on this trip,” said Xuhai Lu. “We flew a Chinese airline last time. Chinese airlines provide better service than American ones.”

VOA’s Mandarin service contributed to this report.
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China Southern Airlines has flown its inaugural Guangzhou to Mexico City flight, via Vancouver, the first route operated by a domestic Chinese carrier to the Latin American nation, the Mexican government said on Tuesday.

China’s interest in Mexico, including tourism and investment, has been on the rise in recent years. In 2016, 74,300 Chinese tourists visited Mexico, up 33.5 percent from a year earlier.

Mexican authorities expect over 100,000 Chinese tourists to visit this year.

China and Mexico recently pledged to deepen ties at a meeting between their top diplomats following the U.S. presidential election victory of Donald Trump, who has tested Washington’s relationship with both countries.

 
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The Senate’s top Democrat said Tuesday that President Donald Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns is going to make this year’s promised overhaul of the tax code “much harder.”

Sen. Chuck Schumer says Trump is opening himself to second guessing about his motives for supporting different policies and that the average American will think he’s making changes because “it’s good for him.”

Schumer, D-N.Y., said voters are “going to say, ‘Oh, he’s not doing that because it’s good for me, he’s doing it because it’s good for him.’ So for his own good, he ought to make them public. And the big mystery is why he hasn’t.”

Trump, a billionaire real estate magnate, is the first presidential candidate in decades who has refused to release his tax returns. Critics say Trump’s lack of transparency means the public doesn’t have enough information to determine whether his moves as president could represent a conflict of interest.

“I think he just has an obligation to come clean. When you clean up the swamp, it’s not keeping things secret and it applies to yourself,” Schumer said.

White House Press secretary Sean Spicer said Monday that Trump’s financial disclosures are more revealing than his tax returns and that middle class people are more concerned with their own tax bills than with seeing Trump’s taxes.

Trump has promised to cut taxes for middle income workers. His administration is grappling with how to handle the tax issue in the wake of last month’s failure to deliver on promises to repeal and replace President Barack Obama’s health care law.
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With its colonial mansions, landscaped gardens and ornate fountains, the town of Petropolis, a traditional haunt of Brazil’s last monarch Dom Pedro II, retains a grandeur that has not faded since he was forced into exile in 1889.

But beneath the opulent surface of the former summer imperial capital, resentment simmers against a special tax, the proceeds of which continue to go directly to the king’s descendants – more than a century after he was ousted.

For many of the 300,000 people living in the hill town, a 2.5 percent tax on real estate transactions is a symbol of social injustice in Latin America’s biggest country where inequality has widened amid its worst recession on record.

Brazil is one of the world’s most unequal places for property distribution with almost half of the land owned by one percent of the population. Colonial-era laws exacerbate the problem, analysts said.

“People aren’t happy to pay this tax,” Isabela Verleun, who works at the Imperial Museum of Petropolis, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “It shouldn’t exist.”

Petropolis, known as the Imperial City, is the closest mountain resort to Rio. Just 65 kms (42 miles) northeast of Brazil’s second biggest city, it’s a favored getaway for Rio residents with its forested hills and waterfalls.

It is well known for its 19th century architecture and home of the Imperial Museum, one of Brazil’s most visited museums.

Dom Pedro II and his family spent summers there after 1845 to escape the sweltering heat of then capital Rio de Janeiro.

Inside what is now a tourist attraction, children slide along wooden floors as adults marvel at a grand dining room complete with crystal chandelier.

“Ancient and Hereditary”

The town’s special property tax – known as laudemio – dates back to before Brazil’s independence in 1882.

The tax was imported to Brazil by its former colonial master Portugal to ensure land was passed from European settlers to their heirs. In colonial years, Brazil’s land was deemed the property of the Portuguese crown.

Despite becoming an independent republic in 1889, the special tax has never been repealed and is now criticized for continuing to earn money for a few privileged families.

“This ancient tax is hereditary and perpetual,” said Vitor Fernandes, a property law expert at the University of Campinas.

Marco Antonio de Melo Breves, a senior official with Brazil’s federal tax department, could not provide figures on how much revenue is paid annually under the royal property tax or how much it costs the average homeowner.

“There is not a unified database where it’s possible to obtain this,” Breves told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Payments are generally made through notaries, or private lawyers who certify documents, Breves said, so the government doesn’t have information on how many royal descendants are receiving benefits from property taxpayers.

Dom Joao Henrique de Orleans e Braganca, a businessman and photographer popularly known as Prince Bishop Johnny, is the great-great-grandson of the final monarch, and counts prominent politicians and artists among his friends.

In an interview with the Brazilian newspaper Valor, Braganca acknowledged some resent the royal family’s continued perks.

The prince said he received “very little money” from Petropolis under the special tax, without giving an amount, but added payments must continue as they are part of a “legal contract” in the city.

Royal Rewards

A fan of the British TV series “The Crown” which showcases the hectic schedules of the U.K. royal family, Braganca said that he does useful work “traveling all over Brazil doing talks in favor of respect for democracy and citizenship.”

The former royal family is not the only institution to benefit from the laudemio and a related land tax known as enfiteuse. The navy and the Catholic Church also levy similar property taxes, said Ely Machado, a lawyer in Rio de Janeiro who helps clients navigate Brazil’s complex housing rules.

A lack of clear property ownership and complex land registration policies are ongoing problems in Brazil, government officials said.

Half the population cannot prove full legal ownership of their homes, according to the Ministry of Cities.

While taxing homeowners based on colonial history may seem archaic, removing the special land tax would require a series of complex legal changes, said Ana Paula Bueno, a lawyer with the Land Governance Group at the State University of Campinas.

When Brazil emerged from military dictatorship and launched a new constitution in 1988 some people pushed for the tax to be abolished, said Verleun, but their lobbying was unsuccessful.

“We have to live with it,” Ana Paula Bueno told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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