Just over four years ago, after being told that the safety of his family could “no longer be guaranteed”, Saudi Arabian Yahya Al-Faifi fled with his wife and five of his children to Britain. Now the Home Office wants to send him back.
Yahya Al-Faifi knew things had become more serious when he received a phone call telling him that, if he did not start behaving himself, his tongue would be cut out. It was by no means a pleasant message, but one that was not entirely unexpected. “They always say that,” says Yahya, sitting in the front room of his home in Grangetown, Cardiff, “to everyone they don’t like”. ‘They’ is the government of Saudi Arabia – and they really don’t like Yahya.
In 2001, Yahya was working for BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia. One day, the company presented him, along with all of the other workers, with a new contract. It was meant, says Yahya, to trick them into accepting a 40% pay cut. He refused to sign. Instead, he began to mobilise workers to fight for their rights.
“I start educating them, travelling to their cities all over the Kingdom, encouraging them, telling them we are protected by law,” says Yahya. Through these efforts, he managed to corral around 2,000 workers into fighting; 500 turned up to a meeting – an extraordinary achievement in a country where trade unionism is illegal. The next day, Yahya was fired.
From the start, Yahya knew what he was getting himself into. His father had been a trade unionist – “within the boundary or the possibility in Saudi Arabia of being able to act as a trade unionist” – and through him Yahya saw first-hand what can result from organising for workers’ rights in his country. “My father died at the doors of the hospital,” says Yahya. “He wasn’t admitted. Of course, he was blacklisted. He was not able to work.”
But his father also taught him how to fight. From the age of 11, Yahya became well versed in the employment laws of Saudi Arabia, which, though not freely available to workers, had been smuggled to his father by a friend. “I have this understanding of the culture of fighting from him,” he says. When he joined the military at the age of 18, Yahya’s trade union activities stopped. All the skills he had learned from his father lay dormant until, 25 years later, BAE Systems attempted to swindle its workforce.
It is wrong, however, to see this as a fight between a man and his employer. As Yahya explains, “They hire and fire according to liaison with the general investigation department in Saudi Arabia. You can’t have a job with the company unless [it is] proven that you are very loyal to the royal family.”
When he took BAE to court for firing him without just cause, it soon became clear who he was really up against. Though Yahya won his case against his employer, they were given the right to appeal – a violation of Saudi law. Yahya went to the highest possible legal position in Saudi law. “I told him this is illegal,” he says. The reply was ominous. ‘That’s what they have decided,’ he was told.
At this point, Yahya could see the writing was on the wall. As expected, at the final court of tribunal it was decided that, though he had been unlawfully dismissed, he should not be reinstated. Instead, he received the ‘compensation’ of his salary up until the date of the verdict.
Yahya was defiant. “I tell them, this is wrong. And they will pay for it in this life or the life after. The Head Judge said: ‘What we did is for your benefit. Because you don’t understand what’s for your benefit. If I have to say it, you are fighting against the Minister of Defence and [it’s] good enough that you got fired, not something else.’”
Still he sought justice. But from the day he was fired, Yahya was effectively a pariah. The workers whom he saved from a 40% pay cut would not talk to him; one British man going so far as to hide under his desk to avoid seeing him. “Before I got fired they were in contact with me at least three to five times a day,” he says. “When they got their jobs back, they stopped contacting me, and when I by chance met one of them in the shopping mall [he] just turned [his] face in the other direction. I was completely isolated from all my friends.”
Yahya’s case had loomed large in the Saudi national press. But from the time of the verdict, that, too, stopped. “The last article was written in English,” says Yahya. “It was the day after the verdict and the journalist himself told me: ‘It’s the last one we can do.’” The word had come down from above.
Then came that phone call. And there was more to come. “All my landlines stopped – dead,” says Yahya. “And all my friends – their mobile numbers have changed.” To this day, his four brothers, who are still in Saudi Arabia and have been denied the right to travel, will not speak to him.
Yahya now found himself under constant surveillance from a car parked outside his house. Finally, a man with strong ties to the government, who may or may not have been a friend, informed him that if he wanted to look after his children, he should leave the country. Wisely, he did. In the UK, he applied for asylum, and was told he should have an answer in two weeks.
The Home Office then took four years and three months – and turned his application down.
An Uneasy Exit
Yahya’s rejection of asylum letter makes for interesting reading. For one, it states that he has not been involved in any political activity since coming to the UK. (Yahya has been a vociferous and constant trade union activist since his arrival; he has been on the picket lines for council workers, job centre workers and teachers, and has given numerous speeches at trade union conferences.)
The refusal letter further alleges that “there is no evidence … that [Yahya's] children are in full-time education”. (All four of those old enough to be in the education system attend daily. Two daughters are at university. The careers they have been working so hard towards attaining, for women in Saudi Arabia, do not exist).
One might reasonably expect, given the Home Office have had four years and three months to assess Yayha’s case, their report would be, at the very least, competent. But they may have had less time to investigate than it appears. Written on the front of Yahya’s original rejection letter were the handwritten words ‘Restricted case’.
This indicates the Foreign Office have taken an interest in Yahya, implying that his case is considered a matter of national security. Saudi Arabia, of course, is a key ally of Britain, supplying us with torrents of oil and purchasing billions of pounds worth of weapons. When something which might damage relations comes up – such as, for instance, the investigations into bribery of Saudi officials by British Aerospace employees – British law doesn’t matter. The problems go away.
At his appeal hearing, Yahya presented a document from BAE Systems stating that he had been sacked on orders from the Saudi government. Nonetheless, to the astonishment of Yahya and those involved in his campaign, the Home Office have ruled that the Saudi government has no gripe with him. “By trying to organise a trade union Yahya is breaking the law in effectively a tyrannical regime, so we find it incomprehensible that anyone would say he doesn’t face the threat of persecution in Saudi Arabia,” says Dave Reid, who has campaigned with Yahya since meeting him at a trades council meeting in 2005. “It’d be almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”
Instead, the Home Office would have us believe that Yahya, of his own volition and under no threat, left his five-bedroom house, his three cars, and his eldest son, who was at university, to come to live in Britain. “The money and the house they are giving us is no comparison to the life we have in our country – and still they accuse me of coming here because I want to live on the money of the taxpayers, which is really very painful,” says Yahya.
On February 12, the day of our interview, Yahya received notice that his appeal had been turned down.
What happens next is uncertain. At any point, Yahya and his family could be rounded up, and forcibly deported to Saudi Arabia. There, what are his options? “To be honest, I will not be able to get a job anywhere – and that’s the least punishment I’m going to get,” he says. “I will be blacklisted. If they can they will drag me to a situation where I am left with no choice but to borrow money from somebody and I will not be able to pay it back, and therefore I will be jailed for not paying my debts. This is a typical easy exit for them. If it was worse than that they might accuse me of drugs.”
Alternatively, Yahya says, they could simply send someone to shoot him in the streets.
Fighting for his rights and the rights of Saudi workers, and saving them from a 40% pay cut, has exacted a terrible cost on Yahya and his family. But if he had his time again, would he do anything differently? “No,” he says, defiantly. “Trade unionism is in my blood. I would not stop that under whatever circumstances. Here – and [in] Saudi – until I die. Because not only are we suffering under this experience, there are six million migrant workers in Saudi. They have no rights whatsoever.
“We are not a state; it’s a company. It’s King Abdullah and sons’ company. And we are the company workers. We are workers; we are not citizens. There is no legal system that will protect you, and no rights to a decent life and decent education.
“They have ripped me out of my country, out of my job, out of my friends, out of my compensation, out of everything, and [the British government have] said you are a vicious liar, we have no choice but to send you back.”
Anyone wishing to get involved in the campaign to save Yahya and his family from deportation should email defendyahyaalfaifi@googlemail.com or join the Facebook group.
Just over four years ago, after being told that the safety of his family could “no longer be guaranteed”, Saudi Arabian Yahya Al-Faifi fled with his wife and five of his children to Britain. Now the Home Office wants to send him back.
Yahya Al-Faifi knew things had become more serious when he received a phone call telling him that, if he did not start behaving himself, his tongue would be cut out. It was by no means a pleasant message, but one that was not entirely unexpected. “They always say that,” says Yahya, sitting in the front room of his home in Grangetown, Cardiff, “to everyone they don’t like”. ‘They’ is the government of Saudi Arabia – and they really don’t like Yahya.
In 2001, Yahya was working for BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia. One day, the company presented him, along with all of the other workers, with a new contract. It was meant, says Yahya, to trick them into accepting a 40% pay cut. He refused to sign. Instead, he began to mobilise workers to fight for their rights.
“I start educating them, travelling to their cities all over the Kingdom, encouraging them, telling them we are protected by law,” says Yahya. Through these efforts, he managed to corral around 2,000 workers into fighting; 500 turned up to a meeting – an extraordinary achievement in a country where trade unionism is illegal. The next day, Yahya was fired.
From the start, Yahya knew what he was getting himself into. His father had been a trade unionist – “within the boundary or the possibility in Saudi Arabia of being able to act as a trade unionist” – and through him Yahya saw first-hand what can result from organising for workers’ rights in his country. “My father died at the doors of the hospital,” says Yahya. “He wasn’t admitted. Of course, he was blacklisted. He was not able to work.”
But his father also taught him how to fight. From the age of 11, Yahya became well versed in the employment laws of Saudi Arabia, which, though not freely available to workers, had been smuggled to his father by a friend. “I have this understanding of the culture of fighting from him,” he says. When he joined the military at the age of 18, Yahya’s trade union activities stopped. All the skills he had learned from his father lay dormant until, 25 years later, BAE Systems attempted to swindle its workforce.
It is wrong, however, to see this as a fight between a man and his employer. As Yahya explains, “They hire and fire according to liaison with the general investigation department in Saudi Arabia. You can’t have a job with the company unless [it is] proven that you are very loyal to the royal family.”
When he took BAE to court for firing him without just cause, it soon became clear who he was really up against. Though Yahya won his case against his employer, they were given the right to appeal – a violation of Saudi law. Yahya went to the highest possible legal position in Saudi law. “I told him this is illegal,” he says. The reply was ominous. ‘That’s what they have decided,’ he was told.
At this point, Yahya could see the writing was on the wall. As expected, at the final court of tribunal it was decided that, though he had been unlawfully dismissed, he should not be reinstated. Instead, he received the ‘compensation’ of his salary up until the date of the verdict.
Yahya was defiant. “I tell them, this is wrong. And they will pay for it in this life or the life after. The Head Judge said: ‘What we did is for your benefit. Because you don’t understand what’s for your benefit. If I have to say it, you are fighting against the Minister of Defence and [it’s] good enough that you got fired, not something else.’”
Still he sought justice. But from the day he was fired, Yahya was effectively a pariah. The workers whom he saved from a 40% pay cut would not talk to him; one British man going so far as to hide under his desk to avoid seeing him. “Before I got fired they were in contact with me at least three to five times a day,” he says. “When they got their jobs back, they stopped contacting me, and when I by chance met one of them in the shopping mall [he] just turned [his] face in the other direction. I was completely isolated from all my friends.”
Yahya’s case had loomed large in the Saudi national press. But from the time of the verdict, that, too, stopped. “The last article was written in English,” says Yahya. “It was the day after the verdict and the journalist himself told me: ‘It’s the last one we can do.’” The word had come down from above.
Then came that phone call. And there was more to come. “All my landlines stopped – dead,” says Yahya. “And all my friends – their mobile numbers have changed.” To this day, his four brothers, who are still in Saudi Arabia and have been denied the right to travel, will not speak to him.
Yahya now found himself under constant surveillance from a car parked outside his house. Finally, a man with strong ties to the government, who may or may not have been a friend, informed him that if he wanted to look after his children, he should leave the country. Wisely, he did. In the UK, he applied for asylum, and was told he should have an answer in two weeks.
The Home Office then took four years and three months – and turned his application down.
An Uneasy Exit
Yahya’s rejection of asylum letter makes for interesting reading. For one, it states that he has not been involved in any political activity since coming to the UK. (Yahya has been a vociferous and constant trade union activist since his arrival; he has been on the picket lines for council workers, job centre workers and teachers, and has given numerous speeches at trade union conferences.)
The refusal letter further alleges that “there is no evidence … that [Yahya's] children are in full-time education”. (All four of those old enough to be in the education system attend daily. Two daughters are at university. The careers they have been working so hard towards attaining, for women in Saudi Arabia, do not exist).
One might reasonably expect, given the Home Office have had four years and three months to assess Yayha’s case, their report would be, at the very least, competent. But they may have had less time to investigate than it appears. Written on the front of Yahya’s original rejection letter were the handwritten words ‘Restricted case’.
This indicates the Foreign Office have taken an interest in Yahya, implying that his case is considered a matter of national security. Saudi Arabia, of course, is a key ally of Britain, supplying us with torrents of oil and purchasing billions of pounds worth of weapons. When something which might damage relations comes up – such as, for instance, the investigations into bribery of Saudi officials by British Aerospace employees – British law doesn’t matter. The problems go away.
At his appeal hearing, Yahya presented a document from BAE Systems stating that he had been sacked on orders from the Saudi government. Nonetheless, to the astonishment of Yahya and those involved in his campaign, the Home Office have ruled that the Saudi government has no gripe with him. “By trying to organise a trade union Yahya is breaking the law in effectively a tyrannical regime, so we find it incomprehensible that anyone would say he doesn’t face the threat of persecution in Saudi Arabia,” says Dave Reid, who has campaigned with Yahya since meeting him at a trades council meeting in 2005. “It’d be almost laughable if it wasn’t so serious.”
Instead, the Home Office would have us believe that Yahya, of his own volition and under no threat, left his five-bedroom house, his three cars, and his eldest son, who was at university, to come to live in Britain. “The money and the house they are giving us is no comparison to the life we have in our country – and still they accuse me of coming here because I want to live on the money of the taxpayers, which is really very painful,” says Yahya.
On February 12, the day of our interview, Yahya received notice that his appeal had been turned down.
What happens next is uncertain. At any point, Yahya and his family could be rounded up, and forcibly deported to Saudi Arabia. There, what are his options? “To be honest, I will not be able to get a job anywhere – and that’s the least punishment I’m going to get,” he says. “I will be blacklisted. If they can they will drag me to a situation where I am left with no choice but to borrow money from somebody and I will not be able to pay it back, and therefore I will be jailed for not paying my debts. This is a typical easy exit for them. If it was worse than that they might accuse me of drugs.”
Alternatively, Yahya says, they could simply send someone to shoot him in the streets.
Fighting for his rights and the rights of Saudi workers, and saving them from a 40% pay cut, has exacted a terrible cost on Yahya and his family. But if he had his time again, would he do anything differently? “No,” he says, defiantly. “Trade unionism is in my blood. I would not stop that under whatever circumstances. Here – and [in] Saudi – until I die. Because not only are we suffering under this experience, there are six million migrant workers in Saudi. They have no rights whatsoever.
“We are not a state; it’s a company. It’s King Abdullah and sons’ company. And we are the company workers. We are workers; we are not citizens. There is no legal system that will protect you, and no rights to a decent life and decent education.
“They have ripped me out of my country, out of my job, out of my friends, out of my compensation, out of everything, and [the British government have] said you are a vicious liar, we have no choice but to send you back.”
Anyone wishing to get involved in the campaign to save Yahya and his family from deportation should email defendyahyaalfaifi@googlemail.com or join the Facebook group.
