Migrant workers generally benefitted from it, which is why it never ran short of volunteers.
Slavery does not benefit workers, which is why it requires physical capture and subjugation.
> They often end up in the Persian Gulf after responding to deceptive and misleading advertising in their home countries, causing them to either pay large sums or to borrow such sums from employment agents to secure employment in the Gulf and to pay for their transportation, housing and food. When they arrive, they learn that, based on the value of their wage in real terms, it will be nearly impossible to pay off any debt they have incurred or replenish the sums they have expended. This encourages their employers to withhold, delay or simply not pay wages, coercing the workers to remain on the job, sometimes for a lifetime.
They did not say that.
> We may disagree, but it's their country. And people who don't like it can always leave
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_th...
No, because they care about preserving their political system and way of life- a bit like Japan
We may disagree, but it's their country. And people who don't like it can always leave (yes, I have heard the stories about passports being taken, I'd call that enforcing the contract for the initial term period, and it's not like consulates don't exist)
They are not Persian countries. They are Arab countries that lie on the southwest shore of the Persian Gulf. There are huge cultural and linguistic differences between the two, to say nothing of the political differences, both historically and down to current moment.
Furthermore, those Arab countries have been trying to change the international standard name of the body of water to "Arabian Gulf" to counter their adversary Iran.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persian_Gulf_naming_dispute#:~...
> Can anyone at all become a citizen
No, unless you are ancestrally connected to the country or it's co-ethnic neighbors, or are a foreign woman who marries an Arab UAE citizen.
Some selected naturalization requirements from the UAE's website (https://u.ae/en/information-and-services/passports-and-trave...):
- An Arab individual from Omani, Qatari or Bahraini origin
- Arab individual who enjoys full legal capacity, has continuously and lawfully resided in the member emirates for at least seven years
- Any person, other than those mentioned above, who enjoys full legal capacity if he has continuously and legally resided in the member emirates for a period of no less than 30 years
- A foreign woman married to a UAE National may be granted nationality by citizenship after the lapse of seven years
As out of touch as this might seem with modernity, remember that the United States had anti-miscegenation laws on the books until 1967, and only opened immigration from non-white countries in 1965.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-miscegenation_laws_in_the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...
Putting minimum standards you can't opt out of is the only way to maintain basic right in the face of inevitably growing asymmetry that is the inevitable outcome of even a small amount of initial inequality. Having a slightly higher share of current resources makes it possible to tilt the board to obtain a larger share of future resources until an increasingly small portion owns more and more.
Ultimately slavery would be the alternative for starvation.