Dictator sheds crocodile's tears over human rights violations

May 3, 2008 (ST) Celebrating Labor Day on Thursday, the Meles regime has officially banned all travels Ethiopian workers make to Beirut in search of job. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs disclosed that Ethiopia passed the bill after it made deep study into the human right violations and domestic violence Ethiopian migrants face behind closed doors in Beirut while in duty as maids.

“Suspending the work travel to Beirut was the only solution to minimize the human rights abuses dangers on our citizens,” said Zenebu Tadesse, deputy state minister for labor and social affairs.

During the past few years, a number of Ethiopians have been killed in Beirut by their employers.

Passed human right records show that 67 Ethiopian women have died between 1997 and 1999 alone in Beirut while working. Many never heard again and a lot others remain difficult to trace because their employers change their Christian name to let them in to the country as Muslims

The ministry said it would take strong action against any employment agency trying to send workers directly to Beirut or through a third country.

Every year, thousands of Ethiopian women, lured by the promise of lucrative jobs and comfortable lives, are shipped out to Middle Eastern countries but end up being trapped in prison-like conditions where no one could hear to their shout.

Lebanon is the most popular destination for Ethiopian domestic servants, followed by Bahrain, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

Estimations indicate that there are over 50,000 Ethiopians working in Beirut, mainly women who work as house maids hoping to bring change on life conditions of them selves and their families who are back at home praying every day for them for their safe return. Over 100,000 Ethiopian workers are believed to be working in the Arab countries of the Middle East.

According to Ethiopia women association, Ethiopian women in Middle Eastern countries are facing the worst kind of human rights abuses, subjected to beatings; denied earned wages; forced to toil without sleep; raped by employers; have parts of their body seared in boiling oil by wives of their employers; grilled with hot irons; and thrown out of high-rise windows.” As a result, many are driven to despair and end up mental sickness and sometimes suicide.

Source: Sudan Tribune

---------------------------

Editor’s note: It is an open secret that Ethiopians in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East face exploitation, abuse, degrading treatments and human rights violations of the worst kind. Though we applaud the government for being concerned about its citizens, the measure is in a way scratching the surface of a deep-rooted problem. The reason why Ethiopians chose facing degrading treatment and humiliation abroad is because they face grinding poverty, hunger, diseases and to make matters worse rampant abuses, discrimination and gross human rights violations in their own birth land at the hands of those who were supposed to govern them.

Ethiopians in the Diaspora have been complaining that embassies and consular offices do not assist citizens in times of difficult. They have rather been engaged in spying on innocent citizens and undermining the interests of the Diaspora.  

As long as the Meles regime, whose ideology is based on discriminatory minority rule in the name of liberation, continues to sustain its corrupt tyranny with shear force, banning Ethiopians from travelling to the Lebanon for fear of human rights violations is hypocrisy of the worst kind. Charity starts at home and the mindless tyrant needs to learn this basic fact!