HRW: Lebanon, Stop Abuse of Domestic Workers

(Beirut) – March 23, 2012
 Lebanese authorities should act quickly to reform restrictive visa regulations and adopt a labor law on domestic work to address high levels of abuse and deaths among migrant domestic workers, a group of eight concerned civil society groupssaid today. The government should also announce publicly the outcome of the investigation into the recent abuse and subsequent suicide of Alem Dechasa-Desisa, an Ethiopian domestic worker. The eight groups are Human Rights Watch, Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center, KAFA (enough) Violence & Exploitation, Anti Racism Movement, Amel Association International, Insan, Danish Refugee Council, and Nasawiya.

On March 8, 2012, Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation International (LBCI), a Lebanese television network, released a video filmed on February 24 by an anonymous bystander in which a labor recruiter physically abused Dechasa-Desisa outside the Ethiopian consulate in Beirut. As she protests, he and another man drag her into a car. LBCI later identified the man beating Dechasa-Desisa as Ali Mahfouz,the brother of the head of the recruiting agency that brought her to Lebanon. Mahfouz agreed to be interviewed on television and alleged that his brother’s agency had been trying to return her to her home country because she had mental health problems.

Andualem says beaten in apprehension (AFP)

Addis Ababa – An Ethiopian antithesis personality charged with terrorism pronounced during a justice coming on Monday that he was exceedingly beaten by a associate inmate, terming it a murder attempt.
“There was a murder try opposite me and according to rapist procedure, we wish to record a assign opposite a jail given we did not get adequate medical attention,” pronounced Andualem Arage, of a Unity for Democracy and Justice (UDJ) party.
“I direct to be taken out of that prison,” combined Andualem, who has been in apprehension given September.
Andualem, who walked in justice limping and complained of serious headache, has been charged alongside 23 others, including distinguished Ethiopian publisher Eskinder Nega.
He pronounced he was beaten on Feb 16.
Judge Endashaw Endale pronounced a jail administration contingency benefaction a box to a justice before grave charges lodged.
Andualem’s co-defendants pronounced they feared for their possess reserve given a invalid indicted of aggressive Andualem had not been relocated.
“We are afraid, so we take turns sleeping and we are fearful he will poison a food,” one of a accused, Kinfemichael Debebe, told a court.

 

UDJ authority Gidada Negasso pronounced a indicted attacker, convicted of murder, should not be hold with prisoners undergoing hearing and should have been reprimanded.

“Right divided a justice should have pronounced this is wrong and… a jail administration should also retaliate him,” he told AFP.
Negasso filed a censure with a Human Rights Commission about a attack, though pronounced he had not perceived a grave reply.
Government officials were not accessible for comment. The hearing is approaching to resume on Mar 26.
All a 24 indicted are charged underneath Ethiopia’s anti-terrorism legislation, that rights groups have criticised of being distant reaching and used to suppress pacific dissent.
Some 200 people were charged underneath a legislation in 2011