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SCMP Reporter

PHILIPPINE television news is arguably the most violent and sensational in the world, but an image of spontaneous agony stood out this week.

   A sobbing, almost hysterical pregnant woman stood before the camera, violently pummelling her belly. Her story: she had been working in Kuwait as a domestic helper and had been raped.

  She is one of 416 women who have recently returned to the Philippines from Kuwait under a Kuwaiti-funded repatriation scheme.

   The women allege they were maltreated by their employers and Philippine Embassy staff in Kuwait. Many are now undergoing treatment for trauma.

  The repatriation scheme came too late for Sonia Panama. She died in March after a month in an intensive care ward in Kuwait.

   Her employers, a Kuwaiti man and his wife, are standing trial for her death by beating.

   More than 100 women returned to the Philippines last Monday, their trips paid by Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sheik Saad Al-Abdulla Al-Sabah.

  Another group arrived home in late June. About 20 women, most too ill to travel, remain in a ''safe house'' in Kuwait, according to Philippine consul-general Wenceslao Quirolgico.

   One woman who remains in Kuwait has given birth and is filing a rape case against her employer.

  The Philippines is Asia's only Catholic country and abortion is illegal and culturally taboo.

   Many women who go overseas as domestic workers are unmarried, likely to be virgins, and unlikely to know much about birth control.

  Many women say they work overseas despite the risks because their families depend on their earnings. The Philippine economy would have shrunk during the first quarter of this year if not for the remittances of overseas workers.

  The women tell stories of ''squatting'' in the Philippine Embassy for days after ''running away'' from employers who beat, raped, tortured or cheated them; of alleged collusion between employees and ''volunteers'' working for the embassy and Kuwaiti guards who continued abusing women at the embassy; and of the callousness of embassy staff and the indifference of the Philippine Government to their plight.

  Philippine President Fidel Ramos has ordered an investigation.

  The Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Roberto Romulo, says that on July 7 he instructed the Philippine Ambassador to Bahrain, Leonides Caday, to fly to Kuwait to conduct a full-scale investigation and that he ordered the Ambassador to Kuwait, Mauyag Tamano, and the consul-general to return to Manila for ''consultations''.

  Mr Caday has submitted his findings and Mr Romulo says the full report will be submitted to Mr Ramos   Philippine officials have been notoriously unsympathetic to the plight of Filipina overseas contract workers.

   During the previous administration, then secretary of foreign affairs, Raul Manglapus, advised the battered Filipinas that if rape was inevitable they should ''relax and enjoy it''.

  For several years there have been strong rumours of a ''prostitution ring'' run by, or at least tolerated by, Philippine Embassy officials in Kuwait but little has been done until now.

  Kuwait officials say the reports about mistreatment are exaggerated and meant to disgrace Kuwait.

   These officials say women commonly make up excuses to get out of their contracts.

  A source who has spoken with many of the women and agreed to talk on an anonymous basis said he was convinced many of the women's stories were true.

  ''Some were certainly abused,'' he said, ''while some are riding on the stories of others in the hope of receiving financial compensation.''   The stories are hair-raising. One woman who refused to be named said women were drugged by the Kuwaiti men who employed them and then raped.

   Others complained of not being paid for months, of being locked in their rooms and of being brutally beaten by female and male employers and, on occasion, the children of their employers.

  Once the women slipped away - sometimes at night - their misery would not end when they reached what they thought was the safety of the embassy.

  Many of the women who have returned from Kuwait are staying on the seventh floor of a hotel run by the Overseas Workers Welfare Association (OWWA), a division of the Department of Labour.

   The media is discouraged from meeting them.

   When contacted away from the hotel none of the women would agree to speak on the record.

    But they did say the culprit was a Filipina at the embassy, who claimed to be a ''volunteer'' working for the Philippine OWWA.

   She is alleged to have forced at least three contract workers to provide sex for Arab men.

  The workers who made these claims said they had been intimidated by unnamed people and told to keep quiet.

  One of the most serious claims is that a Filipina seeking help from the embassy was raped there by a Kuwaiti guard.

  Mr Romulo said no Filipina overseas contract worker was raped in the embassy and the woman specifically referred to was taken out of the embassy by her Arab ''boyfriend''.

  Rosita de Vera, who claims to be a spokesperson for the domestic workers, said she has evidence ''embassy employees and personnel of the OWWA were involved in a lucrative prostitution ring which used Filipinas to serve Arab customers''.

  Philippine Secretary of Labour, Nieves Confesor, said her department was working on an arrangement with the Kuwaiti Government for the host country to set up an overseas workers welfare agency and a government office to supervise overseas contract workers by early next year.

  About 150,000 Asian domestic servants, 10,000 of them Filipinas, work in Kuwait, which has a population of 1.3 million.

  ''I'd like to work abroad, but this time I'd like to work in Hongkong,'' said one of the women who had returned from Kuwait.



Beaten and exploited - why 400 Filipinas fled Kuwait