Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
Dozens of Filipinas who were recruited to work in the United Arab Emirates have been trafficked to Syria to work as maids, at times subjected to physical and sexual attacks by their employers and denied the salaries they were promised, according to interviews conducted with 17 of these women over Facebook Messenger.
those who have escaped have fled to the Philippine Embassy in Damascus. about 35 women are now seeking shelter, unable to return home.
Paul Raymund Cortes, the Philippinesâ consul general in Dubai, said, âOf course we are very concerned about their plight.â He said migrant workers should coordinate their overseas employment with Philippine government agencies and seek their help if they âare being lured to work outside the UAE.â
Sold into Syrian servitude, Filipina workers tell of abuse, rape and imprisonment Updated: January 24
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Print article DUBAI - Josephine Tawaging was being bundled off to the airport in a locked car, begging to be let out. She had traveled from her home in the Philippines a month earlier to find work in Dubai, the Middle East’s glitzy business hub, she later recalled. But her recruitment agency instead locked her in a dark and dirty dormitory with several other women, who soon learned they would all be sent to war-crippled Syria to be sold. As Tawaging, 33, was being driven to Dubai’s airport bound for Damascus, she protested one last time - and was slapped across the face. “They got angry with me and said, ‘if you don’t go, we’ll kill you,’ she said in an interview, recounting the ordeal in 2019. Today, she remains trapped in Syria.
Filipina workers trafficked from UAE to Syria, abused and assaulted
Filipinos in Dubai, UK on 12 April 2010 [KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images] January 25, 2021 at 2:36 pm
Filipina workers and maids have been trafficked from the United Arab Emirates to Syria where they have been subjected to assault, rape, abuse and the withholding of their wages, a
Washington Postreport has revealed.
The accounts and testimonies of 17 women from the Philippines, interviewed by the newspaper over Facebook Messenger, reveal that dozens of workers from the south-east Asian country were forced into being transferred to Syria after arriving in the UAE where they initially intended to work.
Philippine migrant workers trafficked from UAE to Syria washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.