Abuse and Neglect
Under Arroyo the past year, 41 Filipinos are in death row abroad and some 23 Filipino migrants have died mysteriously. Cecilia Alcaraz, an OFW in Taiwan, was sentenced to die by firing squad. Alcaraz was accused of killing a broker, her friend named Chou Mei-yun.
But the family of Alcaraz asserts that she is merely a victim of a frame-up, especially after Taiwanese police claimed to have accidentally deleted a video that could have possibly identified the two men who, according to relatives, killed the victim. While Alcaraz’ s sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, Migrante International, an OFW group helping to save Cecilia, said the government had done nothing to work for a more favorable decision from the Appellate Court of Taiwan, which handed out its verdict on May 4.
Alcaraz had actually sent a letter to his family saying that on the first day of the hearing of the Appellate court, she appeared without a lawyer. According to the judge, they had received a memo stating that her lawyer had been busy. The lack of legal representation among OFWs imprisoned abroad has become common under the Arroyo administration. In the 2009 report of Migrante, 14 of the 17 OFWs imprisoned in various jails abroad lacked legal representation.
The 23 Filipino migrants who died under mysterious circumstances also suffered from neglect and the lack of political will of officials of Philippine embassies and consulates, according to Migrante. Philippine embassy officials are wont to just accept the reports of host countries without conducting their own investigation.
On August 7, social welfare attache Finardo Cabilao was found dead in his apartment. Cabilao was among the very few Philippine embassy officials who are well-loved by OFWs because he steadfastly fought for the rights and welfare of abused and distressed OFWs. His family told Bulatlat that Cabilao must have uncovered a big syndicate behind the massive employment of undocumented Filipinos that resulted in many Filipino women being sold into prostitution in Sabah. This, they surmised, could have been the motive behind his brutal murder. And yet, despite his service to the Arroyo administration, his case remains unresolved.
But his family can still be considered lucky for having Cabilao’s body repatriated the soonest possible time. Others have waited for their dead kin, many of whom were frozen in morgues for more than six months. After only four days of leaving their destitute life in Misamis Occidental on November 8, 2008 to work abroad, Emy Pepito died in an accident, after being buried alive in sand mixed with boiling asphalt while working on the foundation of a building they had been constructing.
Still other Filipino migrants workers live and work abroad under inhumane conditions. A group of tile setters working in Qatar went home in April to denounce the injustices they experienced. They did not get the salaries stipulated in their contracts. Worse, their request to their employer was denied, forcing them to stop working. To survive, they begged in the streets of Qatar to feed themselves and so they could buy plane tickets. Ebreo and his colleagues Edwin Anonuevo and Larry Canlas remembered that there were some Filipinos who took pity on them and gave them food and money.
They were eventually repatriated after seeking help from friends in the media. When their story came out through The Filipino Channel and GMA 7, the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Association immediately acted on their case. But the P4,500 ($97) they needed to pay to their employer was made possible through donations from the Filipino community in Qatar and not the Philippine Embassy, which had turned down their request for financial help.