Ugandan women tricked into domestic slavery in Iraq

By Anna Cavell Kampala The BBC has the first detailed accounts of how Ugandan women ended up in domestic slavery in Iraq, and the extraordinary story of their rescue.

At least 100 of the Ugandan women who went to Iraq in 2009 remain unaccounted for

Prossie was working as a schoolteacher when she heard an attractive advert on Ugandan radio.
A Kampala company called Uganda Veterans Development Ltd was recruiting women to work for high wages in shops in US Army bases in Iraq.
She signed up, along with 146 other Ugandan women.
But when she arrived in Baghdad, she discovered that been bought by an Iraqi agent for $3,500 (£2,200). Her real job was as a housemaid for an Iraqi family.
Like many others, she was forced to work long hours, sometimes from 5am until midnight. She often received little food or water and she was locked inside the house.
"It was a lot of work because Iraqis have this dust, the sand storms, it keeps on falling, so you have to keep on cleaning from morning until you sleep," Prossie said.
Rape
When Prossie protested, her employer told her: "We paid a lot of money for you and we were told that you people don't get sick and you don't get tired. So you have to work."

Sam Tumwesigye and Lt Col Theodore Lockwood rescued 14 Ugandan women

Prossie was raped by the man in the house. Several other trafficked Ugandan women we spoke to were raped too.
"I felt so sad and I had no way out. I really hated everything in the house," she said. "It was psychological torture."
On the other side of Baghdad, at an American military base, a Ugandan security contractor called Samuel Tumwesigye heard what was happening to these women.
He called one of them, Agnes, on a mobile phone she had hidden, and promised to help her.
"The first thing I did was go to my bedroom and pray to God," Mr Tumwesigye said. "I thought: 'Please, I'm going to start this. Let me succeed.'"
He told Agnes that if she could escape from the house and get to the Flying Man statue close to Baghdad Airport he would rescue her.
Escape
Agnes had no passport, very little money and she spoke no Arabic. But she had been told that she was soon to be moved to Syria and she believed this was her only chance of escaping.

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Ugandan Labour Exports

• Exporting labour earned Uganda $500m a year, at its peak in 2009
• Most of the workers sent abroad are men, only a small minority are women
• A women's rights organisation, FIDA-U, has filed a court case against Uganda Veterans Development Ltd
• An earlier attempt to sue the company failed when the lawyer pulled out

She waited until the family took an afternoon nap before going up to the roof of the house and stealing an abaya cloak from the washing line. When she got outside the gate of the house, she started running.

She was able to find a taxi driver who spoke English and was prepared to take her to the statue. Agnes had to negotiate her way through four checkpoints without documents.
She called Mr Tumwesigye en route and he risked his job when he appropriated a vehicle from the base and drove to get her - violating a strict requirement of his contract not to leave the base.
Previously, Mr Tumwesigye had approached a base chief, Lt Col Theodore Lockwood, about the women's predicament.
Col Lockwood said there was nothing the US Army could do to help the women. However, if they could somehow get to the base, he would allow them on to it. Continued