Case 1: Juna Budha Thoki

Dear Readers,

Below is the first case I ever had - A Nepali girl called Juna who worked as a housemaid in Rumaithiya. She was 4 pregnant with her husband's child when we met her at Al-Razi Hospital. Her husband works in India.

It is important to make the distinction that she was pregnant with her husband's child because if an Asian looking woman is walking around pregnant - guess what everyone, including the authorities, assumes straight away?
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Juna escaped from two separate sets of people - first her employers and then a couple who picked her up on the road promising to take her to her agency. Instead she was taken to their home and locked up. Juna says little about these episodes other than that all of them were ‘bad people’.

Her escape from the 3rd floor resulted in fractured spine and legs. Like most of the girls in the hospital, when we asked her what exactly happened she just said 'mama mu zain', 'baba mu zain' and we are left to fill in the blanks.

Our immediate concern was that, since Juna was pregnant - the usual trip,
1. early discharge from hospital without full healing
2. prison with squat toilets
3. deportation center with filthy conditions ...

...would be terrible for her spine and legs.

Despite our best efforts, Juna was discharged with her injuries unhealed to Rumaithiya prison because her sponsors had filed a case against her for ‘running away’. Juna suffered much spinal pain from her fracture and her pregnancy.

The police assured us that the deportation center she was going to next, was a ‘hotel’ for the maids with beds and proper facilities. But when we saw it, we were aghast at the conditions – no beds, filthy mattresses lining a wet floor, cramped with women, guarded by only men who looked at them only in one way. Some of them had been there for months – one lady even going mad and removing her clothing and walking around.

We were told that if we purchased a ticket they would let Juna fly as her passport was already in hand. With individually donated funds (we were not a charity, just some concerned ppl) we bought one and handed it in. In the mean time we visited Juna and gave a back brace for her spine - to help her painful visits to the toilet.

A day before the flight we went to the deportation center just to check on her – Imagine our shock when they told us no she would not fly. They had her passport they had the ticket we provided, all the legal work was done, but she would not fly. Why? Because they had entered her name on their list as Nuna not Juna. A clerical error was preventing her from going home. Only if her name was nuna could she go. How many more clerical errors were on that list I don't know.

When we said hey look this name is wrong, just correct it on the list so she can go home, they refused to do anything about it...Men told us to get lost, go away and not come back, they asked us who we were in relation to Juna and why we were helping. They even referred to one of our African volunteers as ‘Sudani’. Some just said ‘we are not going to help you’.

It is difficult to explain the humiliation some of us had to go through - being gestured at like animals, like slaves.

On the actual day of the flight, verbal fights occurred with our ids being asked for and the threat of deportation looming. One of our friends simply refused to budge until something was done. She yelled Haram angrily and caused a public scene. After a long time, simply out of anger and frustration at having a girl yelling in the center, they guaranteed that Juna would be sent to the airport that night at 7pm , 3 hours before her flight.

Our friend did not believe them and stayed in the deportation center from 6 onwards. At 7 – there was no movement. 8 no movement. At 9, one hour before the flight, someone arrived and Juna was transported to the airport, with a volunteer trailing the car to make sure it did not deviate.
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At the airport, Juna was on crutches as her pain had gotten very bad. We called for a wheelchair for her but the official from the deportation center, A Kuwaiti man done up in the regular white robes, said no - she must walk. We were horrified. Numerous times she was offered a wheelchair by Airport officials. A Bengali cleaner was so enraged that she was walking he offered to pay any costs to get her in a wheelchair. But the Deportation escort refused. When she sat down in one, the man motioned with his fingers – get up. He forced her to walk painfully all the way from the airport entrance to her gate.

Everyone in the airport looked on in shock as a well-to-do Kuwaiti man made a poor pregnant Nepali woman with a spinal injury go without a wheelchair because he wanted it that way and had the authority to make it happen. We pleaded with him that she was pregnant and injured, but his face only said that we were wasting his time with the whole ordeal.
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So there you have it folks. This is the most summarised version I could come up with. The amount of wastha and official nonsense we had to go through would be several paragraphs longer - at the level of hospital, jail, deportation center and two random other buildings.

Although this case took two months from start to finish, with Juna spending significant amounts of time in the deportation center... she called us recently. She is reunited with her husband and the last thing we heard was her laughing when she said goodbye and thanks.

If we had not taken a personal interest in Juna, as a person, a clerical error would have kept her here in the deportation center, to give birth, and possibly have her baby taken away on suspicion of not being her husband's. This would have been her 5th month in the deportation center.

And still there are ladies there who have had this happen and continue to live day in, day out, going mad in Kuwait's very own Guantanamo.

The Deportation Center

I'm not sure about this but my friends tell that there's a lawyer who comes on the Arabic TV and talks about issues in Kuwait. And apparently he talked about the deportation center being some sort of 5 star hotel and "why should Kuwait treat these dishonest, bad people so well?"

Now I don't know if my friends were exaggerating but I do know that International authorities are shown a very nice looking place that is claimed to be the deportation center. Well I've seen the deportation center myself. Let me tell you about it...

It's tucked away by the UN roundabout. We only found it after - no joke - 3 full evenings of searching. The police of various districts would not tell us where it really was, sending us all the way to Jleeb, then to Salmiya, then to different areas of Shuwaikh and back again. When we finally found it we asked a couple of ppl there, "is this the deportation center?" No - they said and gave us other areas to go to.

Why lie to us? Well that question was answered when eventually we got permission to go inside. It was horrific. Women line the entire floor. They sleep on filthy matresses on a very wet floor. There is a feel of gloom and despair in the air. This doesn't look like anything built in Kuwait - it's like a third world prison or slum. Rooms full of young women, guarded by only men? Shouldn't conservative parties in Kuwait have something to say about this? We quickly communicated with some of the women in there to get stories. Often, concerned individuals on the outside had bought tickets for some ladies inside to fly home. The LAZY officials in charge had taken the tickets and then not bothered to arrange for the ladies to be taken to the airport. We heard of at least 3 girls that had had tickets BOUGHT for them to leave but they were still there. So in this so-called deportation center, there are women who have been here for months. One had even started taking off her clothes and walking around nude because she had mentally 'lost it'.

You might ask, are the officials really like that? When I walked in, these 'officials' sat with their bare feet up on desks, smoking, drinking their tea and talking to their friends. They paid little or no attention to the timid ppl that came for their help. Indians, Bengalis, Filipinos, Sri lankans, with their heads bowed in servant like respect waited in line for these men to pause in between some hilarious joke they were making. When the officials did pause it was only to yell and shout in anger at those waiting. I was no exception. They gestured at me as if I were a dog, not even looking at me but looking directly above my head. Immediately I felt something inside I had never felt before. A true sense of shame and inferiority. Forget my education, forget my qualifications - I was a hindi, nothing more. They yelled at me, called my dark African friend a 'Sudani' etc. and humiliated us while they laughed on and finally told us to go away. I felt worse than an animal.

Later when I had time to think, I realise that this is something that even sympathetic citizens can never understand. This level of inferiority and unworthiness can only be experienced by expats even those who have served and loved Kuwait to our utmost. Even I only experienced it for a month or so while visiting the deportation center, but many expats go through this daily as labourers, in construction, as drivers, when dealing with the police.

Driving home was surreal - almost like 'Alice of Wonderland' as we passed massive beautiful government buildings, exquisitely designed villas, malls constructed to look like some fantasy escape, shiny gleaming cars of every make model and colour weaving back and forth on the road and a smart new skyline. It didn't make sense to me. How can so much achieve so little?

Well anyways, I just went home and tried to get over the feeling that I was something dirty. It takes a while, trust me. As to the deportation center - it's still there. And if you still believe that there's a 5 star hotel out there, treating these ladies with dignity, please do visit the center yourself.