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Philippines
Thursday, March 28, 2024

Secretary Bello, Kuwait and OFWs

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It is undoubtedly saddening to learn of the plight of Joanna Demafelis, the 29-year-old Filipina overseas contract worker who was employed as a housemaid in Kuwait, and who was later killed by her employers—a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife.  Demafelis’ body was left in a freezer at her place of employment before the Lebanese-Syrian couple fled Kuwait earlier this year.

A worldwide manhunt conducted by the International Police Organization (Interpol) succeeded in locating the killers in Damascus, the capital of Syria.  Although the Syrian government has already handed over the husband to Lebanese authorities, the wife is still in Damascus.  It is not clear if Lebanon and Syria are willing to turn over the couple to the Kuwaiti police.

Last week, a trial court in Kuwait tried the couple in absentia and convicted them.  They were sentenced to death by hanging.  Under Kuwait law, however, the couple can still appeal their conviction to a higher court, provided that they return to Kuwait and submit themselves to Kuwaiti judicial authorities.

Kuwait law allows the state to vacate a judgment of conviction if the Demafelis family agrees to a settlement with the Lebanese-Syrian couple.  Settlement of this sort often involves the payment by the felons of so-called “blood money” to the family of the murdered person.  News reports last week indicate, however, that the Demafelis family is not willing to settle the case.

Legal proceedings in Arab countries, especially cases involving domestic workers from Asia, usually take several years to resolve.  That is why the swift action taken by the Kuwait trial court in the Demafelis case has surprised many veterans in the consular service.  Observers say that the involvement of the Interpol put pressure on Kuwait.   

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When the news of the Demafelis murder broke out, an angry President Rodrigo Duterte ordered a total ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait.  That move forced the Kuwait government to request President Duterte to reconsider the ban.  It also compelled Kuwait to revisit its oppressive policies regarding the treatment of Filipino contract workers in Kuwait.

President Duterte succeeded in hitting Kuwait at its most vulnerable point—the desperate need of its lazy, abusive citizens for domestic helpers whom they treat as modern-day slaves.  Duterte’s move is also a welcome measure—it’s about time a national leader took serious notice of and do something to prevent the abuses Filipino migrant workers routinely suffer in the hands of abusive Arab employers, those from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in particular. 

The irony in all this is that President Duterte had to do the work which his Labor Secretary, Silvestre Bello III, is supposed to do in the first place—to see to it that Filipino workers are deployed only to countries which have sufficient systems, legal and administrative, to protect the Filipino workers. 

Under existing laws, which Secretary Bello ought to know as the chief labor law enforcer in the country, Filipino workers cannot be deployed to countries which do not meet pre-set Philippine safety and legal criteria for the treatment of Filipino migrant workers. Observers believe that had Bello attended to this mandate of the law dutifully, the Demafelis incident could have been avoided.   

By and large, Bello should have had constructive notice of the notoriety of employers in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  Many Filipino migrant workers there often die of mysterious medical illnesses, or commit suicide.

Oil revenues have made Kuwaiti nationals so wealthy that they have retrogressed to the backward and barbarous times of their desert Bedouin ancestors who enslaved or maltreated members of other tribes, and who measured one’s rights on the sole basis of wealth.

Kuwaitis of the latter part of the twentieth century were so self-centered and focused on worldly pleasures that they became complacent about their own national defense.  The result—Saddam Hussein of neighboring Iraq invaded Kuwait and declared it an Iraqi province.  It took a multinational military alliance led by the United States to boot out the Iraqis from a helpless Kuwait.    

Saudi Arabian employers are equally objectionable.  Like in Kuwait, petroleum revenues in Saudi Arabia have made the former backwater desert kingdom very wealthy in the years following World War II.  Because the Saudi government could afford to do so, the expenses of all Saudi subjects— like education and health care —are shouldered by the state.  Everyone in the kingdom became so wealthy that they all became abusive in their treatment of migrant workers in the kingdom.  Like many of their counterparts in Kuwait, many Saudi males routinely rape domestic helpers in their employ.    

Until the discovery of oil and the wealth it brought to the Gulf region after World War II, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were virtually desert plains populated by tribesmen who lived in tents, engaged in the slave trade, and had camels for intimate company. Records indicate that Saudi Arabia is the last nation in the world to outlaw slavery.  That was in 1965.  Good grief!

The debauchery which unprecedented wealth has brought to Saudi Arabia has also corrupted its leaders.  Recent international media reports reveal that the Saudi crown prince, exasperated with the corruption in the kingdom, threw many members of the extended royal family to prison on unprecedented corruption charges. 

Thanks to President Duterte’s no-nonsense treatment of the Demafelis incident, and no thanks to Bello, Kuwait is now seriously considering reforming its laws governing the treatment of migrant workers.  Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries similarly situated with Kuwait who do not want to lose their domestic workers from the Philippines are also rethinking their stance on the treatment of Filipino migrant workers lest President Duterte include those countries in his list of countries where deployment of Filipino migrant workers are banned.

Arab employers will stop maltreating Filipino employees only when their nation’s oil wells run dry, and they themselves become desperate for employment outside their country.

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