According to the LCHR, “having had a scooter accident, he was hospitalized two months ago, suffered multiple fractures (arm, leg and pelvis) and underwent several operations, including the installation of an external fixator at the pelvis level. He is currently held in a very dirty, overcrowded cell, his bones would be getting infected, he cannot walk, and is losing completely mobility in his legs. For several days, he has not been eating, nor drinking, has been vomiting continuously and seems extremely dehydrated. He only seems to be receiving paracetamol for treatment purposes.”

The LCHR has called for the immediate transfer of Sany Kumar to the hospital. Otherwise, he risks at a minimum, permanently losing the use of his legs and, at worst, losing his life.

We urge the Lebanese authorities to make in the coming hours the decision to transfer Sany Kumar to a health care setting, and in case the medical director of the prison refuses, that he be immediately examined by an independent doctor. We also asked the Justice System to expedite its decision and to show clemency for humanitarian reasons, and the Embassy of India to take all necessary measures to repatriate him to his country.

For additional information:
Marie DAUNAY, President
Lebanese Center for Human Rights (CLDH)
Bakhos blg. 1st floor, St. Joseph Hospital Street
Dora – Beirut, Lebanon
Tel : +961 1 24 00 23 / +961 3 887 108
www.cldh-lebanon.org

The woman is suspected of smuggling into the country the two women to nurse her father a few months ago. The women were forced to work around the clock caring for the older man and perform other house work. The employer had confiscated the women’s passports and did not pay them enough. The woman kept the caregivers under lock and key and even placed cameras all over the house to ensure that the imprisoned women wouldn’t leave.

One of the migrant woman managed to procure a cellphone and call the police. The Israel woman was brought before a judge who extended her detention for four days. She is suspected of unlawful imprisonment, holding persons in slavery-like condition and trafficking humans for forced labor.

The majority of Asia’s 60 million migrant workers are women, and many of them work as housemaids and nannies. MFA believes that existing international conventions do not adequately protect their rights.

“A definitive, coherent, and comprehensive instrument is needed to clearly establish minimum standards and rights for all domestic workers as workers,” Migrants Forum Asia executive committee chair Ellene Sana said in a speech on June 3 to delegates to the ongoing 99th International Labor Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

Sana lamented that domestic work has not been fully and widely recognized as work; domestic workers have not been covered by labor laws that protect and promote their rights, welfare, and dignity.

“Despite the significant contributions of domestic workers to their households and employers’ families, to communities and countries (both of origin and destination), and to the industries and economies in which they selflessly invest their time, skills, sweat and tears, these domestic workers have yet to enjoy the recognition they have so long deserved,” she said

You can read the full article here.

Most women that migrate for work do so because of poverty and a lack of opportunities in their home countries. em

“I have spoken with the Department of Foreign Affairs and other government officials, but it seems nothing is being done,” Jesus Zapanta told UCA News.

His son, Joselito Zapanta, went to Riyadh in October 2008 to work as a tile setter. Migrante (migrant) party says that his employer did not pay his salary for six months so he left and survived on part-time jobs.

He phoned his family in May last year to say he would could send only a little money for his two young children.

The next the family heard was in June when a friend told them Zapanta had been badly beaten by his Sudanese landlord who had died in the dispute while trying to collect rent.

Joselito Zapanto went to Saudi Arabia to work as a tile setter in 2008, but after his employer withheld his salary for over six months, he left his job. He then worked at odd jobs to support himself, and tried to scrape together enough money to support his young family in the Philippines. His father maintains that he was trying to defend himself when he accidentally killed his landlord.

Earlier this week, M-R.org wrote about allegations that Zapanto had been badly beaten on death row.

According to this article in The Enquirer:

Migrante-Middle East (ME) said the family of Joselito Zapanta had sought help from their Manila office after learning that Zapanta had experienced “heavy beating” at the Malaz central jail.

“Zapanta’s family requested for his protection. They said he could hardly eat because of the heavy blows he sustained,” John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-ME regional coordinator based in Riyadh, said in a statement.

Monterona said the family had no information on who had beaten Zapanta.

“It could have been a fellow prisoner,” he said, adding that their group had yet to independently verify the report.

“He (Zapanta) used to call me from his cell. I have been calling his mobile phone since yesterday (Saturday), but there was no answer. In one instance, someone answered. When I asked to speak with Joselito, the line was cut,” Monterona said.

Zapanta is in prison for killing his Sudanese landlord, who reportedly beat him brutally after he did not hand over his rent because his wages were late. According to a statement from Migrante, he fought back and accidentally killed the landlord. He has been in jail since June 2009

The extensive 26-page report surveyed the conditions of domestic workers in Lebanon, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain (as well as Malaysia and Singapore). The report remarked that the conditions of migrant domestic workers are gradually, albeit slowly, improving. However, domestic workers are still extremely vulnerable and under-protected in the Middle East.

The report details how migrant domestic workers can be subjected to exploitation by several actors, starting from recruitment agencies in their own countries and up to policemen in their country of destination if the approach to report abuse. As the report states “the failure to properly regulate paid domestic work facilitates egregious abuse and exploitation, and means domestic workers who encounter such abuse have few or no means for seeking redress.”

The vulnerability begins at home, where recruitment agencies often provide false information to migrant workers about their future conditions and pay. Those agencies usually demand a high fee for securing the work visa, forcing the future workers to go into debt. The burden of debt to the agency makes the domestic worker fearful about reporting abuse and possibly losing their job and being unable to repay the “loan” to the agency. Once a worker arrives to his county of destination, recruitment agencies sometimes substitute the contracts the woman signed back home with a new contract with poorer conditions. We have covered a case of such worker, Grace from the Philippines. She was promised a job in Qatar as an executive secretary for 700 QAR per month, but upon arrival she was informed that she’ll be taking care of a child, with no days off and for 600 QAR ($165) per month.

Domestic workers in the surveyed countries require a local sponsor, to whom their work visa is tied. The sponsorship creates dependency and vulnerability and makes exploitation much more likely. As the report remarked “As the immigration sponsor, the employer can typically have the domestic worker repatriated at will, provide or withhold consent on whether she can change jobs, and in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, obstruct her ability to leave the country. In practice, termination of employment often means the worker is obliged to leave the country immediately with no opportunity to seek redress for abuses or settlement of unpaid wages… Migrant domestic workers who leave their employment without their employer’s consent lose their legal status, making them subject to immigration penalties and deportation.”

We’ve previously reported how an unpaid Indian worker (read: slave) resorted to hiding in an airplane bathroom to be able to return home, after his abusive employer wouldn’t return his passport and give him permission to leave. Other employers, once their domestic workers muster up the courage to report the abuse, often counter-accuse the worker of committing crimes like theft of running away, and the police sometimes takes their side. We previously reported about a Sri Lankan maid who ended up in a Jordanian hospital after her employer beat her. When she complained, the employer accused the maid of theft and child abuse and the maid was arrested while still recovering from her injuries.

The invisibility of domestic workers in the homes of their sponsors to the outside world creates an increased risk of abuse, sexual harassment, food deprivation, and forced confinement. “In the worst cases, domestic workers may become trapped in situations of forced labor, trafficking, or slavery, or they die from murder, botched escape attempts, or suicide”, the report states. As we’ve documented, the high numbers of domestic workers taking their lives in Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia is extremely worrisome and attests to the poor living and working conditions those housemaids have to endure.

The justice system in most Middle Eastern countries discriminates against migrant workers. As the report remarked, “Human Rights Watch has documented patterns in which the combination of poorly conducted investigations, lengthy trials, and weak enforcement of judgments combine to pressure victims of violence into accepting small financial settlements, a return ticket home, or nothing at all.” Last year we mentioned the case of an abused Sri Lankan maid who ran away from her Bahraini sponsor and approached the police, only to be returned to him. We also reported about the case of an Indian maid who was severely abused by her Bahraini sponsor who returned to India five months after the case was filed, and yet no charges was brought against her abusive sponsors.

Labor and Immigration Reforms

The report discusses the positive reforms in the labor and immigration laws made by regional governments. Unfortunately, other than in Jordan, regional governments do not include domestic workers under the protection of its labor laws. Other regional governments, like the UAE and Lebanon, introduced the standard employment contract, which regulates the domestic worker’s wages, but “falls short of providing the comprehensive protections provided under national labor laws”, the report noted. The contracts, which are also in use of private recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia, do not give housemaids a weekly day off, it does not limit their working hours, and permits employers to forcibly keep their maids indoors. The reformed laws in Jordan still allows employers to hold their domestic worker’s passport and prohibit them from leaving the house, even on rest days. Changes in the sponsorship system in Kuwait and Bahrain excluded domestic workers.

Exposure to Racism and Sexism

The report notes that “Government officials, employers, and recruitment agents often make arguments against reform that reveal deep racial and gender stereotypes about migrant women and men, and the insecurities of wealthy elites that may feel physically and culturally threatened by large migrant populations but are also deeply dependent on them.” As we’ve shown, media reports in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE portray domestic workers as abusive sneaky witches, lazy liars and criminals. In addition to this “A second set of tensions around immigration reform center on sexual stereotypes and fears. Employers commonly describe their fear of migrant men or express stereotypes of migrant women as either sexually loose or as innocent and naïve in order to justify their practices of confining migrant domestic workers to the home and prohibiting them from taking a day off”, the report states.

The Human Rights Watch report paints a bleak picture about the rights of migrant domestic workers in the region. Despite the reforms, there is still a long way to go before domestic workers can arrive to the Middle East without fear of being abused, exploited, discriminated against and ignored by authorities.

The worker went to the embassy to seek protection from his abusive sponsor, but did not reach his destination when his sponsor, accompanied by policemen caught on to him. The sponsor then began to brutally hit the worker with an iron rod in front of the policemen who did not stop him. Officials in the Indian embassy who wanted to protect the worker hesitated because of the presence of the apathetic Kuwaiti police. After suffering this abuse, the worker was arrested and brought to the Daiya Police Station where he was pressured into some form of “compromise”.

Unfortunately, this disturbing case of injustice is not extraordinary. Only a few days ago we reported about the rape of a maid by a Kuwaiti police officer. Migrant workers commit suicide in Kuwait on a weekly, if not a daily basis, and the causes of their death are rarely investigated. No sponsor to date has been charged with abusing his worker to the point when suicide seemed like the only way to escape the maltreatment.

Recently, the Kuwaiti Appeals Court reduced the sentence of a Kuwaiti woman who beat her Asian maid to death from 15 to 7 years. The woman beat her maid with wooden and iron objects and then dumped her in a bathtub where she suffered for 10 hours until dying, yet the Appeals Court reduced the woman’s charge to merely “beating that led to death”. The Kuwaiti “justice” system seems more interested in cases where Kuwaiti nationals are the victims of a crime.

While we are encouraged by such proclamations, we offer our readers to remain cautious. It is hard to forget that Dr. Al-Afasi announced plans to abolish the sponsorship system months ago, and yet Kuwait’s new labor law, which passed in December 2009, did not include this necessary change. The law also did not set a minimum wage for private sector workers (most of whom are expatriates). We hope that this time, the announcements coming from Kuwait’s government will materialize.

Much criticism has been leveled against Kuwait’s new labor law, which was passed late last year, for not going far enough and abolishing the Sponsorship system, for not include domestic workers under its protection, or for not setting a minimum wage requirement. Another downside of the new law, which highlights its discriminatory nature, is the prohibition on creating labor unions which applies to Kuwaiti and expatriate employees, but not Kuwaiti employers. Migrants are also not allowed to form syndicate organizations, unlike their Kuwaiti counterparts, leaving them with no ability whatsoever to unionize and demand their rights in a collective fashion.

Iftikar, a Pakistani worker who was recently interviewed by the Kuwait Times stated that the law is pro-Kuwaiti and pro-employers adding that “this is of course a clear violation of our rights as expatriates. As if we are not a part and will not be affected by whatever decisions are made in the company. The law is very selective; the law pertaining to labor unions discriminates expatriates against local workers”.