George Floyd is not the only one who has been suffocated because of his brown skin tone, but there are thousands who are exposed to many forms of racism in Arab countries, as violations against African domestic workers are one of the aspects of racism in the Arab world.
The wave of protests that erupted recently in the United States of America after the killing of George Floyd, has shed light on the spread of racist practices in Arab societies.
The writer Sarah Daadouch said in a report published by the Washington Post that the global uproar caused by the killing of George Floyd at the hands of the police in Minneapolis created a growing feeling of resentment against the violations against African and Asian immigrants with dark skin, and sparked widespread debate about the manifestations of widespread racism. In Arab societies.
The crisis of Ethiopian workers
In Lebanon, the crisis of Ethiopian women workers left homeless in front of the closed Ethiopian consulate in Beirut has surfaced recently.
The author quotes one of the workers that the owner of the house where she was working expelled her without warning, and added that he was planning to leave her in front of the Ethiopian consulate along the lines of dozens of workers who had been laid off in recent weeks.
The worker, "Tigest", said that her employer was withholding her passport and phone and had not paid her dues for a full year, according to Daadouch.
Racist practices
Aya Mahjoub, a Lebanese researcher at Human Rights Watch, considered that this crisis, which coincided with the “Black Life Movement” is important to society showed the true face of racism in Arab countries and the way in which foreign workers are treated.
Mahjoub said that people are beginning to realize that attacking migrant domestic workers is not just individual violations, but rather the product of laws that encourage society to treat foreign workers as "second-class" human beings.
According to the author, domestic workers from African countries face different forms of racism in the Arab world, which not only includes domestic workers from Ethiopia, Ghana, and other African countries, but also includes dark-skinned Asian women from Indonesia and the Philippines.
The author emphasized that foreign workers are in some cases subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse, without having a place to turn to for help. Former Lebanese Labor Minister Camille Abu Suleiman acknowledged the existence of such violations, describing them as "contemporary slavery."
The author added that a large number of videos have spread over the past years, and documented dangerous racist practices against foreign workers in the Arab world.
Celebrities back the case
The writer indicated that many Arab celebrities have supported the recent protests, and have tried to shed light on the manifestations of racism prevalent in the Arab world.
For years, Sudanese model and beauty expert Abeer Sender dedicated her blog on the Internet to talk about racism issues in the Arab world. After the recent protests erupted in the United States, she focused on spreading the insulting words of her followers.
In one of her posts on Instagram, Sender said that one of her friends called her a racist title when she was six years old, and she explained that the girl was repeating what she heard from her parents. "Thus racist expressions become self-evident for some," Sender wrote.
Last June, the controversy intensified after the dark-skinned Egyptian actor Mohamed Ramadan was exposed to a stream of racist comments after he posted his picture with his son on social media.
Recently, Moroccan actress Mariam Hussein and Lebanese singer Tania Saleh published modified pictures on the Internet showing them in dark skin to express their solidarity with the "Black Life is Important" movement.
Maryam Hussein had to delete her image after facing a campaign of criticism, while Tania Saleh wrote, "I have always dreamed of being black", and refused to delete the post.