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Alem’s husband, Lemesa Ejeta, and their two children carry
the suicide victim’s picture in Ethiopia
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BEIRUT: Alem Dechasa-Desisa left Ethiopia the day after
Christmas last year. She headed for Lebanon, where she planned to make enough
money to support her two children.
Within three months, she was dead, the victim of an apparent
suicide. Even before her death, Alem had become something of a cause célèbre in
some parts of Lebanese society and her case drew international attention.
Abused outside her own consulate in a videotaped incident,
Alem was forced by a man later identified as Ali Mahfouz into a car as she lay
screaming on the ground outside a place that was supposed to keep her safe.
At 33, Alem was one of 200,000 migrant domestic workers in
Lebanon. That her case has garnered notice makes it an anomaly, but what
happened to her is not.
Nearly every step of her journey from Burayu, her home
outside Addis Ababa, to her eventual death in a psychiatric hospital in the
Lebanese mountains is indicative of a failure in the haphazard Lebanese system
that deals with the women who come to work in the homes and care for the
children of many in this country.
Alem’s husband, Lamesa, told The Daily Star that he and his
wife borrowed more than 4,500 Ethiopian Birr, around $260, to facilitate her
travel. That’s about three months salary of the country’s average national
income, and most of it went to a local broker.
He also said she was expected to pay the first two months of
her salary to agents in Ethiopia.
Three years ago, Ethiopia imposed a ban on its citizens
going to Lebanon to work as domestics. So Alem went through Yemen. Ethiopia’s
consul general in Lebanon, Asaminew Debelie Bonssa, has estimated that there
are between 60,000 and 80,000 Ethiopians in Lebanon, only 43,000 legally,
having come before the ban.
That makes women like her especially vulnerable to human
trafficking. Ghada Jabbour, head of KAFA’s Trafficking and Exploitation Unit,
said that Alem was “seemingly a victim of trafficking. Not only had she
incurred debts to come to Lebanon, but also she was smuggled outside Ethiopia
because of the current ban. In addition, the sponsorship system in Lebanon tied
her to a specific employer and did not grant her the freedom to decide her
future.”
Trafficking is a tough crime to prove, and despite an
anti-trafficking law passed in Lebanon last summer, not much has been done in
the way of implementation. And women continue to come, trafficked or otherwise.
In large part, this is due to financial imbalances. Even paltry salaries –
several workers told The Daily Star of wages around $200 a month for fulltime
work – can amount to a great deal in struggling home countries.
Lebanese authorities still grant visas to people from
countries with deployment bans, and so Alem arrived, technically “undocumented”
but very much part of the Lebanese “kafala” (sponsorship) system where work and
residency is tied to a specific employer, even before she made it to the
airport.
Because she was in the country illegally, Bonssa said she
and others like her are hard to keep track of. Activists say even documented
women are often afraid or unable to contact their embassies if they need help.
According to Hicham Borji, president of the union of
workers’ recruitment agencies, there are around 450 licensed agencies in
Lebanon. An optimistic estimate, he says, is that 100 of these agencies – that
act as go-betweens between workers and employers – actually conform to the
terms of their licenses. These include a stable location, a land line and a
so-called “safe room” for domestic workers who may need to stay at the agency.
Alem’s agency – which was supposed to care for her when she
was not with an employer, sent her to two homes. Both sent her back. Chadi
Mahfouz, the agency’s director, delegated his brother Ali Mahfouz to deal with
Alem after she returned from the second house.
Chadi Mahfouz told The Daily Star that his brother, now charged
with contributing to and causing Alem’s death, is not an employee of the agency
he directs. This means the agency was acting illegally – but it has not lost
its license, in fact it has since become a member of the union.
After what he said were two suicide attempts – both after
her removal from the second house – Ali Mahfouz brought Alem to the consulate,
where he told staff she was mentally ill. Bonssa, who has since expressed
regret at trusting Mahfouz, told him to take her to a hospital. It was outside
the consulate, a place that ought to have been a refuge, that the beating took
place.
At the hospital where she was later brought, according to a
forensic report leaked to The Daily Star, Alem was treated as “a patient
suffering from severe depression.” She was on five medications, and according
to the doctor who was sent by the General Prosecutor, she had no visible
bruises or abrasions. “But she said she has pain in her scalp and made us
understand that she had been grabbed by her hair,” the report continued.
Indeed, in the video Mahfouz is seen dragging Alem by her
hair.
The police arrived at the consulate the day of the incident,
in late February. The government-ordered physician was not sent to see Alem
until March 10 – two days after the video went viral and two weeks after she
was abused – and she died on March 14. According to a leaked indictment,
charges were pressed against Ali Mahfouz March 20, around a month after she was
beaten.
“If [the abuse of Alem Dechasa-Desisa] was not broadcast [by
a local television station], there would be no attention from the Justice and
Labor ministries,” said Ghada Jabbour, head of KAFA’s Trafficking and
Exploitation Unit. Migrant worker suicides are frequent in Lebanon, she added,
and “usually there is not a complete and serious investigation about the death
of the worker and the case is closed quickly.”
Why Alem killed herself remains an unknown. Although some
members of her family reported that she and her common law husband were having
marital problems, he denied this. Lamesa said he spoke to her some five times
during her short time in Lebanon, and she reported no troubles. “We lived
together for 13 years and she had no mental problems,” he said.
Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch shares Jabbour’s concerns.
He said that Mahfouz’s prosecution, which is not unheard of but extremely rare,
“will be an important precedent to follow. But every week there are employers
who lock in domestic workers, every other week there is a suicide, are we going
to see prosecution for forced confinement and other abuses?”
Both Jabbour and Houry argue that ultimately the sponsorship
system itself needs to be changed, with Houry calling it “the root cause of
many of these violations.” But there are other issues that should be addressed,
Houry added, including orientations for employers and employees. And, he said,
“they need to start researching the role of agencies ... frankly that industry
is deeply problematic.”
Borji of the agencies’ union agrees his sector does need to
change. Admitting Mahfouz’ agency into the union, he argued, will help it
improve.
But while he “hates” the sponsorship system, Borji does not
see a viable alternative. In theory, he believes it ensures transportation to
Lebanon and medical care are covered by sponsors. Instead, he said there should
be real punishment for abusive employers and those who withhold salaries.
Lebanon failed Alem – as it does so many other workers. And
now, in a final indignity, her body still lies in the very hospital where she
took her own life a month ago. Her husband said he cannot work, as her family
has come from another village to wait and mourn. Chadi Mahfouz has said he’s
ready to facilitate her repatriation – but there appear to be some bureaucratic
hitches. Now Lamesa has one modest request: “I just want her body back.”
(The Daily Star ::
Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
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