Today’s View: Raging for our women migrant workers

Imagine a mother, a daughter, a sister or a cousin made to suffer in the hands of our government officials.  They are touched, probed, forced into submission, psychologically and physically tortured by one who is supposed to help and protect them in a foreign land?  How would you feel?  Rage! 

By BEVERLY ANN S. MUSNI, YR.
Davao Today

What is the difference between a Filipino pimp here and a Filipino pimp abroad?  How do they sell their “wares?”

For one,a Filipino pimp here, whether be it for the services of a high-class prostitute or not makes a real deal.  In exchange for a flesh service, you talk, you deal for the terms of service then the deed is done.  Usap, Ayos, Deal.  Then they give you the share of your night’s worth of work.

But for pimps abroad, it is much worse and callous.  The Filipino pimps there are working as government officials and respected in international bodies.  In the vilest, most disgraceful and disgusting manner, they demand sexual services from abused, terrified and home-sick women migrant workers for themselves and sometimes for other people.  This is a form of treachery, an outright evil and cruelty.

Imagine a mother, a daughter, a sister or a cousin made to suffer in the hands of our government officials.  They are touched, probed, forced into submission, psychologically and physically tortured by one who is supposed to help and protect them in a foreign land?  How would you feel?  Rage!

Rage against this government who made our women migrant workers suffer, toiling through blood, sweat and tears in an unfamiliar land.  Rage against this government who failed to provide jobs and who continued to commercialize women and strip them of their dignity.

Victims were asked by embassy and labor officials whether they could pay for their flight home or if they still have money.  But because they lost their jobs or escaped from their abusive employers, victims were then offered indecent proposals.  Rates would range between 1,000 rial or approximately USD 260 or 100 rial or USD 26 for desperate women who only want to go home.

All they want is to go home.  But instead they were led inside a lion’s den, a trap, an inescapable reality wherein you are stripped buck naked, down to your soul, without means of salvation in the hands of our very own government.

Prostitution is found in migrants’ shelter in Jordan and Kuwait with labor officials demanding sex for tickets to go home.  These are just a few places where sexual exploitation is the norm for our OFWs who are seeking for repatriation.

One labor official, Mario Antonio, an overseas welfare officer from Jordan blamed the recruitment agencies and human traffickers that they have apparently crossed while “protecting” immigrant workers.  But an allegation this strong can only ricochet back to Antonio as his own wrongdoing.  The gravity of this offense cannot just be presented to the media just to malign a labor official for allegedly derailing human trafficking.

Allegations are substantiated by direct testimonies of the victims themselves and corroborative evidences to support their claims, because in cases of sexual abuses, the testimonies of victims are given more weight as against the wrongdoer.

What transpired against our OFWs is happening in the Middle East countries.  Fact-finding missions are still to be conducted in countries in Southeast Asia like Hong Kong, Malaysia and Singapore.  We still don’t know about the other countries in Europe and America where countless OFWs are stationed.  But it is clear to all of us that women are still regarded as sex objects and the government has done nothing to rectify, to raise and to save us from this predicament.  Instead, it has continued to survive on our flesh, feeding on our bodies for the sake of economic growth and enslaving us to work our asses off to hell.

There may be a little difference between ordinary pimps or pimps who work for the government.  The latter is just more merciless.  Because during the most vulnerable state of a migrant worker — without choice and with nothing else but to bid out of fear and longing to go back home — they screw you through and through.  That’s commercialization of women for you.

Beverly Ann S. Musni, Yr. is a free spirit.   She is a wanderlust, a dreamer and a frustrated rock star who dreams of travelling the world one day.  She is a world peace advocate.