Nothing can beat this story for it’s Im-ashamed-of-being-Lebanese effect.
We’d rather stay here than work in Beirut… (photo source)
Sure they’re starving and living in miserable conditions, but that doesn’t mean that they have to put up with the ultimate abusive environment: The Lebanese household.
On the occasion of Labor Day, Ethiopia has officially banned its citizens from traveling to Beirut in search of jobs, the African country’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs has disclosed. Ethiopia passed the bill after it probed the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while employed as maids.
“Suspending work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimizing the human rights abuses and dangers facing our citizens,” said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy minister of state for labor and social affairs.
During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have died in Lebanon in questionable circumstances.
Hello, my name is Mustapha and I've been blogging about Lebanese society, business and politics since February 2005.
It’s a terrible shame and the laws need to be upgraded and/or applied.
OTOH, when the Lebanese are abused and their rights are violated where do they go?
That’s why many of us hold or plan to hold another nationality. Keep up the good work you lousy political class from hell, until we’re all gone, and the Ethiopians too.
Unfortunately, we have an abysmal human rights record when it comes to our treatment of foreign labor, be it “domestic” labour from poorer third world countries like Sri Lanka and Ethiopia among others or even construction workers from Arab countries. We mistreat and underpay them, but our abuses do not stop there. We treat the refugee communities in Lebanon, be they Palestinian or others with disdain and disregard to their human rights and rights as refugees. What is just as bad is that we institutionalize and legalize discrimination against women by granting their (male) “guardians” the right to veto their travel and by refusing their husbands and children the right to citizenship. The list goes on and on. It is simply sad that not only do we not uphold the laws that we do have but we have neglected the need to modernize our legal system to take into consideration the most basic of human rights. We squabble and discriminate and excel at being petty and vain. Shame on us.
Lebanon has human rights problems? Yeah. But nothing compared to Eithiopia. They invaded their neighbour Somalia just at the moment when the Islamists in Somalia were close to unifying the country. They shell innocent civilians. They rape women and last but not least. They went inside a mosque couple of weeks ago beheaded 11 Sheiks who are part of Islamic sect which believes in non-violence. Oh and they kidnapped 40 kids who were in the mosque to learn Quran. They released 36 of them after pressure from Human rights organisations.
Ethiopia has nothing to complain about. They treat Somalis and their own fellow human beings like Dogs. Ethiopia is the only country in the world where the government tied to starve it’s own people. Ethiopia is the only country to have been receiving AID money since 1945 and still be poorer then hell.
Stormrage,
Regardless of Ethiopia’s own record, which I don’t know enough about to comment on, the Lebanese have no right to treat foreign workers from any nationality with the disregard that they do. Period.
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We would like to call on international organizations and the consciousness of each individual to assist in stopping such huge human trafficking and devastation! whaterver the employment agancies are…they are 100 percent fake, twisted….they are just human traffickers….importing women for sex, and wicked experiences. No need of their money…please send these women home before we start reacting.
The African government and the Ethiopian gnt should stop selling their daughters to arabe countries. Each arab daughter is a source of honour what about your daughter?
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I was reading several comments written about Ethiopians in Lebanon.
It is brital and unacceptable to see those ethiopians being enslaved, killed and beaten.
amon the comments I read it is sad to read when one of the commentators judge that this womens deserve that and he continued explaining his anger about what happened in somalia and related the issue to that. Sad and it is flat wrong.