Rape victims in the UAE facing imprisonment for having extramarital sex, claims documentary

Some of the women are also pregnant

Many foreign workers go to the UAE under the Kafala system (Warren Little/Getty Images)

A significant number of migrant women working in the UAE face prosecution and sometimes jail after being raped, a new documentary claims.

The Zina laws, based on Islamic Sharia law, makes extra material sex illegal in the country; this includes adultery, fornication and homosexuality.

A BBC Arabic documentary, Pregnant and Chains — to be screened at the BBC Arabic Film Festival this week — found “hundreds” of women have been imprisoned under these laws, including women who have been raped and women who are pregnant.

The documentary featured a Filipina woman raped by a male servant in the home where she was working as a maid.

After becoming pregnant, she had no way to prove she had been raped and therefore found herself at risk of being prosecuted under Zina. She fortunately managed to leave by alerting the press in the Philippines.

A Human Rights Watch report in 2014 confirmed the risk of Zina charges “can deter any victim of rape and sexual assault from reporting such crimes for fear of being prosecuted themselves.”

Footage from the documentary shows women shackled and chained by their hands and feet as they stand trial.

Drewery Dyke, UAE researcher for Amnesty International said: “Rape victims have been accused of having engaged in illicit sexual relations, while the rape allegations themselves have been left uninvestigated.”

“While press reports suggest that this situation has slightly improved, anecdotal accounts indicate that vulnerable women from migrant communities continue to be detained for illicit sexual relations, often being left to languish in jail with their newborn babies.”

Many migrant women go to the UAE under the Kafala system, which gives individuals the right to work as long as they have an employer as a sponsor.

However, under this system, workers can only leave the country with their employer’s permission and can only work for the employer who sponsors them. Many of them have their passports confiscated by their employers — although this is illegal.

Human Rights Watch said they found “a range of serious abuses that migrant domestic workers suffer under the UAE’s visa sponsorship system” with some reporting sexual abuse.