[WA-News] Speaking out: Migrant workers demand to be heard

[Jennifer Radloff]

Migrant workers were given a chance to testify to the problems they face
when working in foreign countries during a discussion held at the NGO Forum
on the World Conference Against Racism.

Migrant workers form a large part of the working population in many Asian
countries. In Hong Kong, for example, there are over 200,000 foreign
domestic workers. In Malaysia, migrant workers populate the factories,
clean the streets and work in people's homes, often doing the jobs no one
else will handle. But, according to Irene Fernandez, who chaired the
meeting, this contribution is often marginalised or completely overlooked.

Irene is the director of a Malaysian NGO, Tenaganita, and is currently
undergoing a trial for spreading false news, after releasing statements on
the living conditions in detention camps for illegal immigrants. She showed
compelling video testimony from a worker identified only as Babu.

Babu worked in Bangladesh, doing a variety of jobs, including writing
articles for newspapers. He supported his family and wanted better for them
and for himself. He was approached by an acquaintance, an agent for an
employment agency, who told him how he would be able to make money in
Malaysia. Babu decided that he would take the gamble. His mother sold the
property she had inherited so that Babu would be able to pay his way. An
agency arranged for the documents and tickets, assuring him all would be
well and that he would, upon arrival, be working in a hotel.

When Babu reached Malaysia, he found that he had been 'sold', as Irene
explained, to a construction company. In tapes he sent home to his mother,
he explained how gruelling the labour was, how he lived in fear of the
police and how he was trapped, earning little and unable to pay his mother
back for her investment in him.

His mother and sister worried. They tried to approach the agency who had
sent Babu to Malaysia, but the agent refused to listen to their queries. He
was never in when they called. Eventually, Babu's mother was shown a
ticket, saying her son would return the following Monday. The family spent
the weekend preparing Babu's favourite meals. But Babu did not come home on
the plane as promised.

Babu came home a corpse.

He died while in a detention camp in Malaysia.

Babu's ordeal in Malaysia was extreme, but violence and human rights
violations of migrant workers are widespread. Domestic workers are
particularly susceptible to abuse, working in their employers' homes and on
call 24 hours a day.

Kasnah Binti Seda Karman was in tears, barely able to choke out her
testimony. She related a life of continuous work and humiliation in Saudi
Arabia. Kasnah left her home in Indonesia to work for money to put her two
children through school. Although her employers forced her to work from 4am
to 12am, with two meals of bread and tea daily, Kasnah said that to begin
with they treated her well. After three months, however, this changed.

"They bashed my head against the wall, once they crushed my hand with a
steel chair," she said. In a written testimony that was read out, after
Kasnah became too overwrought to continue, she said that her ears would
bleed, that she would shake from hunger, and that she suffered from dizzy
spells.

When she left due to this maltreatment, she was paid a fraction of what she
had been promised.

However, the issue of the mistreatment of migrant workers has roots in both
the home and the host country. Divina Carreon Garcia from the Philippines
was a domestic worker in Hong Kong.

"The Filipino government exports people like they are products. I was one
of them. Our government's policies do not meet the economic needs of the
people, leading to forced migration. Our people are being sold like
products, just for high profits."

Migrant workers are at the World Conference Against Racism to try and halt
the culture of denial that has built up around their problems. Divina has
helped found the Federation of Returning Migrants and Their Families, to
combat racism faced by returning Filipinas.

She explained, "We are organising people to break the silence that has
built up over long years, encouraging them to fight for their rights and
welfare."

There are a number of groups championing migrant worker rights at the WCAR
NGO Forum, acronyms such as DAWN, names such as Solidaritas Perempuan. They
are hoping, at Durban, to find a space where governments will be forced to
hear the voices of this marginalised community.

Sonia Randhawa is a Malaysian journalist with Radiq Radio, a web-based news
service. She a member of the WCAR Women's Media Team of ISIS
International-Manila.