Behind the glamorous seven start hotel and posh sky scrappers are the poor workers who built them.
The city of Dubai is a major tourist attraction to many whom aren't aware of the workers in the shadows. Celebrities travel and promote the populated emirate aiding in molding the public opinion of the United Arab Emirates. The likes of Tiger Woods, Angelina and Brad Pitt conduct business there, bringing in more traffic. People see what they wanter to see and fail to notice to mistreatment towards workers who clean and aid the city. You have to look at the big picture and wonder why there aren't any ghettos in Dubai.
Workers who have attempted to strike were ignored and several deported. The kefala system prevents foreigners from changing jobs without permission from their company. Instead of using signs workers refused to go to long hour jobs that were paying as much as $200 per month.
This city of the United Arab Emirates censor their press and forbid public demonstrations. A worker in Dubai name Khaled is living on $102 a month and shares a room with 5 men in the Sonapur or "The Land Of God" which is a dusty, survailanced labour camp for 200,000 workers. The workers live in unsafe and unsanitary conditions sharing bathrooms with up to 50 other men. Many die from living in the squalor or suicide.
Workers come to Dubai hoping to earn a better living but end up being used and hidden behind the wealth and glamor. Women are lured into the UAE by sex traffickers and sold as sex slaves or to work in the households. According to Aljazeera, reports including Human Rights Watch's "Building Towers, cheating workers" and a documentary from the BBC program me Panorama, exposing abuses at Arabic have irritated some Emirates who believe the country is unfairly targeted by Western organizations.
Sharan Burrow, general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, said workers such as Khaled are "effectively living in 21st-century slave states". Slavery was banned in the Emirates some 40 years ago yet the likeliness is still censored. The facts are around and the stories are being told yet people only think of golden walls and Ferraris when they see Dubai. Indian, Nepalese and Bangladeshi construction workers are being paid $5 for 12 a day, 7 days a week in extreme heat. According to the media group, Raise the Hammer, outside the city, child slaves are kidnapped and held in bondage to serve as jockeys in the immensely popular camel races. While the workers and woman who travel to the UAE with false promises of higher pay, the press censor it all. The press are forbidden to report on anything that could damage Dubai or its economy. The cycle continues as Dubai continues to profit from western investors and advertising its wealth.