Thread by @BBCWorld

How Google, Apple and Facebook-owned Instagram are enabling an illegal online slave market in the Gulf
Thread
Exclusive report by @BBCArabic bbc.in/2BWOfnz

@BBCArabic Our undercover reporters spoke to 57 people in Kuwait selling domestic workers via 4Sale, an app provided and approved by Google and Apple

They found violations of Kuwaiti and international laws on modern slavery, human trafficking and forced labour

@BBCArabic “No telephone, or going outside”

Our undercover team arranged to meet with some of the sellers in person

One of them told our team he was a policeman and urged them to break the law

@BBCArabic One woman on the app tried to sell our undercover team a 16-year-old girl for $3,800

We are calling the child Fatou to protect her identity

@BBCArabic “What they are doing is promoting an online slave market”

We took our evidence to Urmila Bhoola, UN Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Slavery

@BBCArabic “Fatou” was found by the Kuwaiti authorities and sent to a government-run shelter

Because she was under 21 she was deported, home to Conakry, Guinea

@BBCArabic Here’s how this illegal market works

@BBCArabic On Facebook-owned Instagram people use hashtags to sell domestic workers

@BBCArabic The policeman and the woman who tried to sell us Fatou declined to comment

We also approached 4Sale, Facebook, Google and Apple and Haraj, here’s what they told us

@BBCArabic There are still thousands of domestic workers being bought and sold on Instagram, Haraj, and other apps approved and provided by Google and Apple

Watch the full exclusive report by @BBCArabic on bbc.in/2WDbDju