Friday, 06 April 2012
The body of an Ethiopian domestic worker was found in her hospital room in Lebanon after she reportedly hanged herself. Four days prior to her suicide, a video was released online of her being mistreated by a Lebanese man outside the Ethiopian consulate in Beirut.
Alem Dechasa, who took her life at age 33, came to Lebanon despite her country’s warning about domestic work in the Middle East. The mother of two traveled to Beirut via a Lebanese recruitment agency to work as a house maid.
Video footage circulated on the Internet showing the Ethiopian woman being brutally dragged on a street in Beirut, only a few days before she committed suicide. Shocked viewers reported the ongoing mistreatment of domestic workers in Lebanon.
The Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International channel (LBC) released the video on February 24, recorded by an unidentified bystander, showing Dechasa lying on the street outside the Ethiopian consulate, crying and begging to be left alone.
Only moments later she could be heard screaming as she is forcefully dragged and pulled by her hair into a car by a Lebanese man, later identified by LBC as Ali Mahfouz.
Abuse of foreign workers has been so frequent in Lebanon that Ethiopia, the Philippines, Madagascar and Nepal have put restrictions on their citizens who want to travel to Lebanon for employment.
The Ethiopian Consul in Lebanon, Asaminew Debelie Bonssa, said he was approached minutes earlier by Mahfouz, the brother of the director of the recruiting agency that brought Dechasa to Lebanon, who brought her to the consulate, to complain about a dispute, claiming she was mentally ill and needed to be deported.
Bonssa said he informed Mahfouz that Dechasa needed medical treatment and that Mahfouz agreed to take her to the hospital. However, moments later Bonssa heard a loud voice coming from outside his second-floor window.
“We informed him (the policeman) and I myself went there, I explained to him that this incident is unacceptable and that as far as the government of this country has given her a visa, the government has to take the responsibility and so he agreed to take her to the hospital and also to take measures against this person (Mahfouz) and so it was after that unexpected incident which has already saddened everybody, and you know, Lebanese people are good people as far as I know.”
Dechasa later took her life by hanging herself using bed sheets at the hospital as she felt anxious due to the debt she owed to her recruitment agency and the discovery of her husband’s marriage to another woman.
Human Rights Watch says, on average, one domestic worker a week in Lebanon either commits suicide or falls off a balcony and dies.
The Lebanese cabinet called for an investigation into the case after the footage of her mistreatment was shown on television. Minister of Justice, Shakib Qortbawi said that both the Justice and Labor ministries held an emergency meeting to discuss the issue.
Rola Abimourched, a project Coordinator at KAFA (enough violence and exploitation), a Lebanese NGO aimed at preventing violence against women, says the problem of the sponsorship system is that it ties a worker to her employer and creates vulnerability for the workers and a corresponding burden on the employers. The sponsorship system, she adds, means the domestic workers cannot change jobs unless their employer authorizes them to do so.
The video release and Dechasa’s suicide have highlighted the issue of workers’ treatment in Lebanon and put pressure on the government to approve a new law for foreign workers.
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