PERSONAL STATEMENT TO THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE
2003 SESSION OF THE
U.N. WORKING GROUP ON CONTEMPORARY FORMS OF SLAVERY
GENEVA, JUNE 2003
Rasheed Radwan
If the definition of slavery is being completely under the control of someone, having the power of life and death over another person, then my sister and I were slaves. It may seem incredible that it is still happening in the 20th century, but it is true. My sister, Amjad Radwan, and I, Rasheed Radwan, were kidnapped by my Saudi father, Nizar Radwan, when I was 8 years old and my sister was only 2. We were denied access to our mother, Monica Stowers, an American citizen, for ten years and five years respectively. My sister was told her stepmother was her real mother. Because I was a boy, I was able to run away from my father when I was 14 years old. Unfortunately for my sister, she had to endure another six years of abuse by my father and especially by his Palestinian wife, Horiah Othman.
My father could beat my sister and I mercilessly, he could keep my sister from attending public school indefinitely by removing her records, he could marry her off at age 12 legally, and there was nothing the Saudi police would do about it. They told my mother that a father has the right to beat his children. Sadly, the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh decided it was none of their business either, even though we all went to them repeatedly for help. We were sent back or rebuffed twice by the embassy when we went there seeking asylum. The rights of American children and American mothers were not important enough.
My mother went to the Islamic court in Riyadh when we were kidnapped, but they ruled that because she did not pray like a Muslim, she was not fit to raise Muslim children. They allowed my father to keep us and did not give her legal visitation. Even the court left it up to my father whether or not we could see our mother. Of course he would not let us see her. And there was nothing she could do about it. The Saudi government and the U.S. government ignored the problem.
Because my mother could not get anything accomplished in Saudi Arabia, she decided to return to the U.S. for help. Unfortunately for the future of her children, she was told there was little that could be done except write to the Saudi authorities. The State Department did visit my sister and I a few times on welfare visits. On one visit in 1989, a consular officer noticed several bruises and a scar on my sister, according to the State Department's own report (unclassified F030 R 5-09-89 INFO Log-00 ADS-00 NEA-04 SSO-00 L-03 AMAD-01 CA-02/016 W From Am Embassy Riyadh to Secretary State WASHDC IMMEDIATE 3346)
My grandfather in the U.S. wrote a letter to King Fahd and got no response. I wrote a letter to President George Bush. The response was that the U.S. could not tell another sovereign nation what to do. They were not signatories to the Hague Convention.
When my mother tried to return to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi government told her that my father would have to approve it. The Saudi government allowed my father, a kidnapper, to decide if my mother could get a visa to Saudi Arabia.
My sister and I were denied access to our own country (we were both born in Houston, Texas) and to our own mother. What happened to us the following 10 years can only be described as pure hell.
This was how we lived:
- Amjad, my sister, was not allowed to sit at the table and eat like the rest of her half- brothers and sister. She had to sit on the kitchen floor by the drain and eat. She remembers the roaches that came out of the drain. I was told to stay outside after school and could not come in until after dark. She was given big plates of mostly rice and told she had to eat all of it before she could leave. When she threw up, Horiah, her stepmother, would grab her head and slam it on the wall. You could see the impression it made. When my father was home, she could sit at the table. I heard Horiah hitting my sister when she was giving her a bath. "If you cry, I'll cut you up with a knife." I could hear my sister moaning. As she was hitting my sister, Horiah would say, "Yill an al Yahoud." (Damn the Jews.)
- I would tell my father what was happening, but he called me a liar and would beat me. He told me I was trying to make trouble. Deep down he knew what was happening but was too proud to admit it. "What do you want me to do, put my other kids out in the street? It is better that 2 kids suffer (my sister and I) instead of 4 (Horiah's kids). He would also tell me, when he was beating Amjad, "If you see her die in front of you, it is none of your business."
- My father routinely beat me for not praying. He justified this by saying it was in the Hadith. He would hit me on the head with an egal (made from a rubber hose) or a stick and kick me in the stomach. I went around all the time with bumps on my head. He would also pick me up high by the hair on my temples; I became bald there. Amjad got beaten on the head and kicked in the stomach and dragged on the ground by her hair.
- I got severe stomach pains one day and had to go to the hospital. My father would not take me. He said I was just pretending. I had to take a taxi. 30 minutes later I was admitted to the hospital for removal of my appendix, which was in danger of bursting.
- When I was 9, I was put in jail on the military base where my father lived and given 60 lashes. The police made me lay down on the ground and held me down by my hands and feet while they beat me with a stick. My crime - I entered an empty house on the base and used the curtains and drawers there to make a tent. My father insisted I be punished this way.
- My older stepbrother, Ahmed Radwan, routinely abused me sexually. He had taken a picture of me naked and used it to blackmail me with. One day he brought an uncle to the house to do the same thing with me. The uncle threatened to get me into trouble if I complained.
- My sister was given bread and butter for school lunch while the others were given money; she was sent to bed at 6 pm while the others were allowed to play; she had to sleep on the floor - even the maid had a bed; I slept on the stairwell on a small foam mattress.
- I continually begged my father to let me go home to the U.S. "America is a country of prostitutes and drugs and you'll become a 'kafir.' "(non-believer)
- My father tried to get me put into a reform school because he could not get me to pray, but he was not successful. I complained to the police about my father, but they told me that I should be ashamed of complaining about my own father.
Living like this made my sister and I grow up with low self-esteem. I tried to kill myself. My sister tried to get away from one of our father's beatings by trying to jump off the roof.
In 1990, my mother returned to Saudi Arabia on a one-month visa and refused to leave. She had been allowed to visit my sister and I at the police station earlier in the year on a visit that took months of negotiating between the two governments. I ran away from my father then, and my mom and I went to my sister's school and took her out. From there we went to the U.S. Embassy and refused to leave. They would not help us, and after 12 hours of coaxing and threatening us to make us leave, the Consul General, Karla Reed, ordered the U.S. Marines to remove us. The country I had dreamed of being rescued by turned its back on me and my sister.
As a result, my mother was arrested and put into the women's prison, my sister was locked into the house by my father, and I had a nervous breakdown ("conversion reaction"). A princess got my mother out of jail, I managed to escape from Saudi Arabia through Bahrain and go to the U.S., and my sister was married off at age 12.
Amjad then ran away from her husband and went into hiding with my mom. She told our mother that her step-brother had sexually assaulted her too. My sister got caught again by my father, who beat up my mother to get her, but Amjad ran away again. The Saudi government threatened my mother: if you do not give Amjad back to her father, you will be sent out of the kingdom. My mother told them they would have to put her in jail first.
My mother and sister went a second time to the embassy for help and my sister wrote out an affidavit asking for help. No response. They were told they would have to leave.
The U.S. and the Saudi governments let us down. Why should human beings have to live like this?
I waited in the states hoping my mom and sister would come soon. They did not. I lost hope and direction. I started using drugs and quit going to school. I got into trouble.
I returned to Saudi Arabia to be with my mother and sister. We were living together as a family for the first time in 14 years. We gave up hope of leaving together.
Help finally arrived when Congressman Dan Burton came to offer to take my sister home in 2002. I was over 21 and was finally free of having to get my father's permission to leave. Amjad would never be free of him because she was a girl. But help came too late for her. She was afraid she would not be able to adjust to life in the U.S. She was almost 20 and had not finished elementary school. Our mother had been treated for cancer. How could her brother help her; he had a record. She got scared and ran away from mom and married a married Saudi man with 5 children. Even her Saudi relatives were shocked at this. Her father had arranged it.
When children are denied their basic human rights by the laws of one country (Saudi Arabia) and the collusion of another country (the United States), it has devastating consequences. My sister and I are living testaments to that.