Qatar museum documents historic and modern slavery
(10 Apr 2016) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4030753
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Doha's Museum of Slavery claims to be the first of its kind in the Middle East.
It documents Qatar's past role in the slave trade as well as highlighting slavery in today's world.
But rights groups have alleged that migrant workers face conditions amounting to forced labour in modern day Qatar too.
STORY-LINE:
Doha's Museum of Slavery looks at Qatar's role in the slave trade during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
It's part of a development of four museums in the Msheirib area of Qatar's capital that aim to show how life was previously lived in the country.
The other three museums focus on Qatar's architectural heritage, the evolution of family life and the oil industry.
Slavery is a sensitive issue in a country that has been accused of modern day slavery and human rights abuses of its large migrant worker population.
Qatar is racing to transform itself with big infrastructure projects as it prepares to host the 2022 football World Cup.
The contemporary population of Qatar descends from native Arabs and the African slaves that were brought here.
And Msheirib, a newly re-developed area of Doha costing 5.5 billion US dollars, was once the most prosperous part of the city.
The white-washed building housing the Slavery Museum, Bin Jelmood House, is the former home of a trader of slaves mostly from East Africa.
The Manager of Exhibitions at Msheireb Museums, Fahad Al Turkey, says it's not known how many slaves would have been at the house at any one time, but they lived here and were traded in the large interior courtyard.
After falling into disrepair, Bin Jelmood House was refurbished over three and a half years to its current pristine state, with exhibits in rooms that once held slaves.
The displays show Qatar's role in the slave industry, the trade across the Indian Ocean, and its global history.
Its video and text panels tell the story of life for slaves in Qatar, who had been brought on perilous journeys overland or by sea.
Slaves were marched to the East African coast and shipped to the island of Zanzibar to be auctioned and from there transported to the Gulf.
"The slaves were bought to support the families and their day-to-day jobs, and also to be part of the pearling industry," says Hafiz Ali Ali Abdullah, the Director of Msheireb Museums.
The potentially life-threatening work of pearl diving was the core of the country's economy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and increasingly supplied a global demand. Free and enslaved divers would work side-by-side.
Date production was also a key source of income at the time, and slaves were used for the labour intensive work involved.
At that time one in five of the population of 27,000 were slaves, although the nation lacked the significant wealth it enjoys today.
Abdullah says that the modest living standards meant that master and slave did domestic work together and were closer socially than those of the transatlantic trade, where plantations were common.
For Qataris, owning slaves was rarely a show of wealth, he says.
The exhibit also speaks of the advent of the oil-era in the country and how slaves were forced to work on oil rigs after the Second World War.
Another wing of the building examines the abolition of slavery.
Following its neighbour Bahrain, Qatar became the second country in the region to formally end the practice and integrate freed slaves into society in 1952.
Abdullah explains that the then Emir, Sheikh Ali bin Abdullah Al Thani, bought all of the slaves in the country and gave them their freedom.
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