OFWs to charge RP before UN

For workers on death row

By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: October 15, 2008

MANILA, Philippines -- A group of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) will file a human rights complaint against the Philippine government with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants for alleged negligence that has resulted in, among others, the beheadings of OFWs on death row overseas.
Connie Bragas-Regalado of Migrante International said Jenifer Bidoya is the seventh OFW beheaded in a foreign country since the Arroyo government came into power in 2001.

She said another 29 are still on death row overseas.

Bidoya was beheaded for the killing of a Saudi national Tuesday afternoon, Manila time.

Regalado said the complaint, which is still being prepared, will also include the Philippine government's alleged neglect of the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos deported from Sabah, as well as the OFWs stranded in several Middle Eastern countries.

"By the end of the year, the massive crackdown in Sabah will have resulted in the flushing out of some 200,000 Filipinos," said Regalado, who was part of the fact-finding mission that went to Zamboanga earlier this month to document the hardships the deportees are experiencing.

At a press conference, Regalado said her organization will ask the UN Special Rapporteur, Jorge Bustamante, to conduct his own fact-finding missions in Sabah and Saudi Arabia and make his own assessment of the Philippine government's response to distressed OFWs.

She said the UN Special Rapporteur will attend Migrante’s International Assembly of Migrants and Refugees on October 28-30.

At the same time, Gina Esguerra, coordinator of Migrante's Migrants Assistance Committee, said her committee receives almost a thousand cases annually, ranging from illegal recruitment, human trafficking, non-payment of wages, physical, mental and sexual abuse, mysterious deaths, and OFWs on death row.

Esguerra said her committee is currently handling other cases of Filipinos in death row, like that of brothers Edison and Rolando Gonzales in Jeddah, and Cecilia Alcaraz in Taiwan.

"Families of these OFWs fear for the lives of their loved ones. They gave the cases to Migrante because the government is doing nothing to save them" she said.

Esguerra said Bidoya's beheading will only worsen the depression and desperation of the families of those on death row.

She noted that the Tameez Appellate Court in Jeddah just a month ago affirmed the capital punishment against the Gonzales brothers, who are accused of killing a fellow Filipino.

Regalado said the DFA should create its own investigative body to find out what really happened in these overseas death-row cases.