Lebanon witnessed two cases of suicide last week alone. The blog Ethiopian Suicides catalogs many Ethiopian deaths in Lebanon as the country possesses a large Ethiopian population, as well as a dismal record of migrant rights. Both cases involved a Lebanese domestic worker hanging herself in an employer’s home – almost certainly the source of their misery.

Another Ethiopian woman hung herself in her sponsor’s home in Saudi Arabia, where paltry workers rights and neglected conditions also have a history of pushing maids to commit suicide. Police are investigating the incident according to routine procedure, though the causes of suicide are generally standard themselves – as are the effectively nonexistent punishment for abusive employers.

In Kuwait, where disregard for the plight of domestic workers appears normalized, a woman unsuccessfully attempted to overdose with items from employer’s house. Police investigations have again commenced to determine the woman’s motivation – as if the reasons for her agony could be separated from the life that sponsors almost entirely dictate and create. Another domestic worker attempted to commit suicide in her sponsor’s home as well, but was ‘thwarted’ by police, who then proceeded to interrogate her.

These suicides and suicide attempts come amidst promises for substantive legal change made by many countries; Kuwait agreed to increase the minimum wage for domestic workers, Saudi has promised more protections for its workers, and Lebanon’s minister announced the Kafala system’s forthcoming abolishment. Whether these agreements affect the lives of domestic workers and mitigate the conditions that preempt suicide – or whether they are lost into abyss of broken treaties and pacts – will, at least tangentially, be measured by this year’s suicide rate.

Originally posted on the Lebanese blog Ethiopian Suicides.

The show featured a 5 minute act where a couple was “negotiating” with a representative of a recruitment agency for a migrant domestic worker. The couple became aggressive and sexually explicit to the point where the recruitment agency representative responded to the couple: “Do you think that I am a pimp? I run a workers recruitment agency here!”. The “couple” then asks for a dirty maid, peeing unwillingly and smelling, and hitting children. The “husband” at the end of the video suggested to the recruiter “to shove up his *** the broomstick that their last maid had used before she jumped from the balcony”. At that point, when we understood that the couple are upset because of the suicide of their maid, the couple’s sudden unwarranted slurs and foul language are covered by a long sequences of “beeping”!

This is not MTV’s first time racist shows. MTV’s odious, unethical and immoral show comes at a time when Lebanese and international media keep reporting on the trafficking and slavery of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon.

You can read here Ethiopian Suicides’ take with some social media comments reproduced in the post.

And you can read here Anti Racism Movement’s commentary.

As for the video itself, you can view it on this link. Do read the comments under it. [UPDATE February 9, 2012: the original video and the original comments were removed and the link was changed to another source].

This news came just one day before the Guardian published a report about Lila, a Nepalese who was trafficked into slavery and committed suicide in Lebanon.

Originally posted on Ethiopian Suicides.

The article is written from the perspective of a Saudi employer who, after years of consciously avoiding the entanglement of profiteering and corruption that characterizes the foreign domestic service market, finally gives in to temptation and initiates his quest for a foreign maid. The introduction gives the impression that the author is primarily concerned with contributing to an enterprise indifferent to the exploitative conditions it begets. But when speaking of corruption and exploitation, the author almost exclusively refers to the victimization of Saudi employers.

He explains his own encounters as well as those of others. For his part, he claims to have been blackmailed by the employment office. He expresses his outrage that such a crime could happen under the watchful eye of the relevant embassies – the embassies that largely fail to regulate these same agencies even with the well-being of their own citizens at risk. He continues with anecdotes from his acquaintances, from news articles (we must assume), and hearsay from the grapevine; this includes nefarious scheming on the part of maids, who cooperate with agencies in pretending to be experienced with housework, and to be “good” for three months – the period an employment agency remains legally responsible for her work. It is presented as wholly conceivable that a maid could “pretend” to be experienced for three entire months without her employer realizing she is unskilled at ironing, washing dishes, etc. He describes a semi-theoretical, generalized trajectory of a maid’s behavior: She is swell and docile for three to four months, fulfilling all of her obligations (even though in truth she does not possesses the applicable skills and is in fact hoodwinking her employer), and then she suddenly undergoes a tremendous change – she’s rude, she can no longer cook, she can no longer launder – she may even abscond.

The author does admit that both the rights of maids and Saudi employers are violated by employment agency tactics. There is certainly truth to this statement, as agencies are notorious for their largely unregulated behavior. Saudi employers do have the right to be upset when they are swindled out of their own money. However, the suggestion of a large-scale conspiracy between migrant workers and these agencies is unbelievable and dangerous; the notion that the average maid would want to abscond from steady employment in a non-abusive household to return home, after the extraordinarily arduous process of immigration, where the prospect of employment is significantly lower – all for for a one time-sum, is difficult to fathom. The author also recounts the story of a friend whose maid absconded, but was later found working in the employment agency’s office. Certainly possible in one instance – but absolutely implausible as the systematic practice the author suggests. Similarly, the author’s other notion that thieving migrants abscond after their three month commitment only to obtain new passports and work permits to continue bamboozling Suadis nationwide is preposterous given that the legitimate documentation process is difficult enough, not to mention the severe penalties illegal migrants, as well as absconding migrants, face.

Perhaps the article is not devious in its intention, but its effect is to support the misperception of foreign domestic workers in the Gulf. Such pieces encourage suspicion towards maids, exacerbating the already tense relationship that exists between so many migrants and their sponsors. Furthermore, it designates migrants as the principal problem while relegating the stories of abuse, slavery, and exploitation to mere stereotypes used to hide the somehow more perturbing manipulation of Gulf employers. It overshadows the darker experiences of domestic workers, who are subject to the invisible sphere of the home and often excluded from labor legislation, with a narrative that centers on economics – rather than human rights.

While migrant workers are not the only victims in the foreign domestic service complex, they are the most seriously affected. This article only adds to the myriad of irresponsible pieces that trivialize migrant abuse in the Gulf.

Police investigators indentified the OFW as Nidzmar Bahjin. According to her kin, she is supposed to return to Manila from Bahrain last Tuesday on board Gulf Air flight GF156, which is expected to arrive 4pm from Manama, Bahrain.

“We condemn her brutal killing. Only a person with no conscience but with a highly criminal mind can do it to her putting even her cold dead body inside her own suitcase,” declared John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator.

He said the killing is quite alarming as it underscore the need to tighten the security not only at the NAIA airports but also in others around the country.

“The OFW’s brutal killing happened under a lax security measure provided by the NAIA security personnel and the deputized members of the Philippine National Police (PNP),” Monterona added.

He said NAIA or other airports must be placed on a high security alert or measures. “This should not be waived or relaxed.”

Monterona also urges the formation of a composite taskforce composed of PNP investigators and NAIA security personnel to probe deeply on the OFW’s killing and a manhunt against the killer or killers must be conducted.

“We will more than be happy to see OFW Bahjin killer rot inside prison cell. Only then, we could say justice is attained,” Monterona concluded.

Written by:
John Leonard Monterona
Migrante Middle East regional coordinator
migranteme@gmail.com

Yesterday, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) through its spokesperson Atty. Raul Hernandez on a radio interview confirmed that OFW Violeta Cortez, on her mid-40’s from San Pablo, Laguna reportedly found dead at an undisclosed street in Damascus on January 5, 2012.

Asked what could have been the cause of her death, the DFA spokesperson said she allegedly was a victim of hit-and-run while in Damascus.

But Migrante-Middle East (M-ME), a migrant rights group, says it is not ruling out that OFW Cortez was possibly hit by a stray bullet while cruising her way out of Homs, where heavy fighting still ensued, going to Damascus to seek the Philippine embassy’s assistance.

“Information reaching us is that she was on her way going to Damascus from her employer’s abode in Homs in her own effort to save her despite pleading assistance to the PH embassy to evacuate her and other fellow OFWs stranded in Homs,” said John Leonard Monterona, M-ME regional coordinator.

Monterona said OFW Cortez is one of those OFWs in Homs who have sought assistance to them sometime in May 2011. “OFW Cortez was among those whose names M-ME submitted to the PH embassy in Damascus pleading to be evacuated out of Homs and eventually repatriated back in the Philippines.”

“There were about 30 of them then in Homs who have called me and plead for assistance as they fear for their lives due to heavy fighting between anti-government protesters and the Syrian military forces,” Monterona confirmed.

“The only reply the stranded OFWs in Homs, including OFW Cortez, got from the PH embassy is an advice to find its way to escape from their employer by riding a taxi going to Damascus where the PH embassy building is located, not minding the high risk present while travelling out of Homs to Damascus,” Monterona added.

Monterona citing the accounts of stranded OFWs in Homs he had spoken then, they could not find the embassy’s presence and its evacuation efforts contradicting DFA’s statement that many OFWs do not want to leave Syria.

“PH embassy in Syria has just appointed its ‘coordinators’, who are OFWs themselves, in Homs, Latakia, and other cities in Syria and direct them of what to do. Thus, we could say there was no actual evacuation done by the PH embassy when the time the situation is not yet that heightened that would allow evacuation of stranded OFWs in Homs, Latakia and other Syrian cities going to a safer place like in Damascus where the PH embassy is also located,” Monterona averred.

Monterona calls on the DFA to probe deeply on the death of OFW Cortez.

“More OFW deaths, though we pray that no other OFW would be hurt or died in Syria, is the price of a ‘wait-and-see evacuation and repatriation stance’ by the PH govt., the DFA and other concerned govt. agencies. Evacuation and repatriation efforts must be pro-active, this is what the MENA crisis taught us so far,” Monterona concluded.

Reference:

John Leonard Monterona
Migrante Middle East regional coordinator
migranteme@gmail.com

The UN Refugee Agency has published several reports condemning Oman for failing to address rampant employer abuse and exploitation, as well as for subjecting migrants to poor living and working conditions. A list of the agency’s reports can be found here.

Excerpt:

I am a proud Omani, but the general attitude among locals here towards South Asians & Southeast Asians makes me sick. I’m using housemaids as an example only. The same applies to construction workers who have built this country block by block (literally) and other low-skilled laborers. Whenever I try to discuss this with colleagues or friends, they claim that the abuse of migrant laborers is worse in other GCC countries and that laborers are better off in Oman. As if that justifies ill-treating another human being!

The aim of this column isn’t to criticize government policies, per se, but rather to address the issue from a human perspective. Nearly sixty years ago my father’s family lived in a cave in the mountains of Dhofar. My grandmother was out with the animals from sunrise to sunset. Like most Dhofaris living in the mountains at the time, every day was a struggle to find food and water. Today, almost every single Omani household has one or two maids whom they treat with very little respect. What went wrong along the way and when did we stop being humble?

Something I find quite interesting is that Oman was one of the very last nations on earth to abolish slavery in 1970. It’s incredible to think that people who actually owned slaves are still alive today. I mention this because perhaps in some way this is linked to how many Omanis view and treat their domestic help, and why they feel the need to have them in the first place. Naturally, slavery is a taboo subject that no one discusses in public here.

I know it’s not fair to generalize because there are plenty of really great employers who treat their labourers as humans. By employing help Omani families are indirectly supporting immediate and extended family members in their employees’ respective countries. However, that does not by any means justify low wages, forced labour, threats, blackmail and confiscation of passports..

Read the full piece here.

In late December, a maid was found hanging in her sponsor’s home. In January, three migrants committed suicide. One maid hung herself inside her room. A man also hung himself in his room. Another maid poisoned herself by consuming insecticide. Suicide is often the last resort for abused migrants who feel they have no other escape.

On New Years Eve, a Kuwaiti woman was charged for beating her maid to death.

Police investigations for each case are still in progress.

Migrant abuse represents a perpetual pattern in Kuwait. Measures are sometimes taken against specific instances of abuse, but there are rarely any attempts to address the chronic mistreatment of migrants.