Kuwait expels Philippine envoy amid tensions over domestic workers

1 / 2
Ambassador Renato Villa speaks during a press conference at the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait City on April 21, 2018. (AFP / YASSER AL-ZAYYAT)
2 / 2
File photo showing Philippines workers from Kuwait gather upon arrival at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, Philippines, Feb 2018. (Reuters)
Updated 26 April 2018
Follow

Kuwait expels Philippine envoy amid tensions over domestic workers

  • Kuwait calls back its Ambassador in Manila amid workers dispute
  • Kuwait police arrested two Filipinos earlier this week over helping maids flee their employers

MANILA: Kuwait on Wednesday expelled the Philippine ambassador and recalled its own envoy from Manila over a growing diplomatic dispute sparked by complaints of the abuse of Filipino housemaids and workers in the country.
In a statement,  Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry said it had declared Ambassador Renato Villa, who it previously summoned twice, persona non grata and had ordered him to leave Kuwait within a week.
The latest move followed Kuwait’s arrest of two Philippine Embassy personnel in Kuwait City last weekend for allegedly encouraging maids to flee their employers’ homes if they are being abused.
Kuwait’s Foreign Ministry accused the Philippines’ mission of a “flagrant and grave breach of rules and regulations that govern diplomatic action where staff helped Filipino house helpers run away.”
Local media earlier quoted Villa as saying his embassy moves in to help abused maids if Kuwaiti authorities fail to respond within 24 hours. Online video later surfaced purportedly showing a Filipino from the embassy helping one maid flee.

The Philippines called Kuwait’s decision “deeply disturbing,” saying it “reneged” on an earlier agreement to work together.

Manila said the expulsion of Villa comes as a surprise considering that Philippine Foreign Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano had issued a formal apology to Kuwait and that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had also offered a public apology during a meeting with Kuwaiti Ambassador Musaed Saleh Ahmad Althwaikh in Manila.
“In discussions at every level with Kuwait, the Philippines has always emphasized that the wellbeing of Filipino nationals wherever they may be will always be of paramount importance,” the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday.
“The protection of the rights and the promotion of the welfare of Filipinos abroad would always be the guiding principle of the Philippines in its relationship with countries around the world, including Kuwait,” it added.

The two nations had been negotiating an end to the Philippines’ ban on workers from heading there following the shocking discovery in February of a Filipino maid Joanna Demafelis stuffed into a freezer in Kuwait City for over a year.
In late March, Lebanese officials said 40-year-old Lebanese national Nader Essam Assaf confessed to killing the woman along with his Syrian wife, who remains at large. Both were sentenced in absentia to death by a Kuwait court early this month, though the verdict can be appealed.
But the arrest of two Filipinos associated with the embassy earlier this week over allegedly convincing maids to flee their employers’ homes and Ambassador Villa’s comments reported in local media over the effort appears to have been too much for Kuwait to accept.
“Expelling the ambassador of the Philippines is a correct measure that should have been taken when the Philippines president first started his threats,” conservative Kuwaiti lawmaker Shuaib Al-Muwaizri wrote on Twitter. “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs should not accept any offers made by the Philippines president or his foreign affairs secretary.”

Since becoming president, the populist Duterte has repeatedly criticized Kuwait for not properly addressing the abuse of Filipinos.
“I do not want a quarrel with Kuwait. I respect their leaders but they have to do something about this because many Filipinos will commit suicide,” he said in January.
There have been prominent cases of abuse of Filipino domestic workers in the past, including an incident in December 2014 where a Kuwaiti’s pet lions fatally mauled a Filipino maid.
More than 260,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, many of them as housemaids. Kuwait and the Philippines have since been negotiating for new rules governing Filipino workers there.
Philippine officials have demanded that housemaids be allowed to hold their passports and cellphones, which is normal for skilled workers like teachers and office workers. But many Kuwaiti employers seize their phones and passports.
The Philippines is a major labor exporter across the world, especially in the Mideast, with about a tenth of more than 100 million Filipinos working abroad. The earnings they send home have bolstered the Philippine economy for decades.

Filipino migrant and recruitment expert Emmanuel Geslani urged Philippine officials to go out of their way to properly address the "diplomatic faux pax", warning that the Philippines had lost the job market in Kuwait, especially for skilled workers. 
In an interview, Geslani told Arab News that the ban has now been running for five months, resulting in more than 50,000 Filipinos losing the jobs they applied for in Kuwait.
“We should really issue an apology because we still want to achieve good relations with Kuwait,” said he said. "The government is apologizing for something which was not wrong on its part, but the way it was projected on social media was wrong.
He said the video of embassy personnel rescuing a maid should not have been posted on Facebook. "Even though what the (embassy) staff is doing (rescuing abused workers) is right, they did not have to tell the world that they’re doing it,” Geslani said.
He added that while everybody wants to have good relations, “the Philippine government is doing it all wrong by allowing the deployment ban to last more than five months.” 
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah Khaled Al-Sabah earlier also condemned the ban saying it “will not serve the relationship” between the two countries.
It’s likely both sides want to negotiate an end to the dispute, especially ahead of the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan that begins in May. Kuwaitis particularly rely on Filipino maids and cooks during the period as they abstain from water and food during daylight hours.
“This is a clash of two rising nationalisms: the tough-guy Philippine president defending his people abroad and Kuwait resenting the insolence of a subordinate,” said Kristin Diwan, an expert on Kuwait and a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
“The expulsion of the ambassador is a hardball tactic on the part of Kuwait, which hopefully will lead to a negotiated settlement. Both countries ultimately benefit from this relationship.”


Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

Updated 10 sec ago
Follow

Hamas military arm releases new video of Israeli hostage in Gaza

The man identified himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza

JERUSALEM: The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.
In the video, whose date cannot be verified, a man addresses US President-elect Donald Trump in English and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Hebrew.


The military arm of the Palestinian militant group Hamas released a video Saturday of a man identifying himself as an Israeli hostage held in Gaza since the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. (AFP/File)

Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

Updated 30 November 2024
Follow

Gaza rescuers say 3 aid workers killed in Israel strike

  • The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen
  • The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment

GAZA: Gaza’s civil defense agency said three aid workers were killed in an Israeli air strike in the Hamas-run territory on Saturday but the Israeli army said it killed a “terrorist.”
The agency said the aid workers killed were Palestinian employees of World Central Kitchen. The US aid group did not immediately respond to AFP requests for comment.
The Israeli army said it had “struck a vehicle with a terrorist that took part in the murderous October 7 massacre,” referring to militant group Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel last year.
“The claim that the terrorist was simultaneously a WCK worker is being examined,” it added in a statement.
Civil defense agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the bodies of “at least five dead were transported (to hospital), including (those of) the three employees of World Central Kitchen.”
“All three men worked for WCK and they were hit while driving in a WCK jeep in Khan Yunis,” Bassal said, adding that the vehicle had been “marked with its logo clearly visible.”
The Israeli army insisted its strike in the main southern city hit “a civilian unmarked vehicle and its movement on the route was not coordinated for transporting of aid.”
In April, an Israeli air strike killed seven WCK staff — an Australian, three Britons, a North American, a Palestinian and a Pole.
Israel said it had been targeting a “Hamas gunman” in that strike but the military admitted a series of “grave mistakes” and violations of its own rules of engagement.
The October 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,207 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed 44,382 people in Gaza, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable.


Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says

Updated 30 November 2024
Follow

Several wounded in two Israeli strikes in south Lebanon, health ministry says

  • Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya
  • The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility

CAIRO: An Israeli strike on a car wounded three people, including a seven-year-old child, on Saturday in the south Lebanon village of Majdal Zoun, the Lebanese Health Ministry said in a statement.
Later on Saturday, another person was injured in a separate Israeli strike on Al Bisariya, which lies near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon, the ministry said.
The Israeli military said it had attacked a Hezbollah facility in Sidon that housed rocket launchers for the armed group.
It added that it had also hit a vehicle in southern Lebanon loaded with rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and military equipment as part of its actions against ceasefire violations.
A truce came into effect on Wednesday, but both sides have accused each other of breaching a ceasefire that aims to halt over a year of fighting.


West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

Updated 30 November 2024
Follow

West faces ‘reckoning’ over Middle East radicalization: UK spy chief

  • MI6 head Richard Moore cites ‘terrible loss of innocent life’
  • ‘In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state’

LONDON: The West has “yet to have a full reckoning with the radicalizing impact of the fighting, the terrible loss of innocent life in the Middle East and the horrors of Oct. 7,” the head of Britain’s foreign intelligence service MI6 has warned.

Richard Moore made the comments in a speech delivered to the British Embassy in Paris, and was joined by his French counterpart Nicolas Lerner.

Moore said: “In 37 years in the intelligence profession, I’ve never seen the world in a more dangerous state. And the impact on Europe, our shared European home, could hardly be more serious.”

Daesh is expanding its reach and staging deadly attacks in Iran and Russia despite suffering significant territorial setbacks, he added, warning that “the menace of terrorism has not gone away.”

In October last year, Ken McCallum, the head of Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5, said his agency was monitoring for increased terror risks in the UK due to the Gaza war. More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza in over a year of fighting.

In Lebanon, a 60-day truce agreed this week between Hezbollah and Israel brought an end to a conflict that has killed thousands of Lebanese civilians.


Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

Updated 30 November 2024
Follow

Israel military strikes kill 32 Palestinians in Gaza, medics say

  • Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City

The Israeli military said it killed a Palestinian it accused of involvement in Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel in a vehicle strike in Gaza, and is investigating claims that the individual was an employee of aid group World Central Kitchen.
At least 32 Palestinians were killed in Israeli military strikes across Gaza overnight and into Saturday, with most casualties reported in northern areas, medics told Reuters.
Later on Saturday medics said seven people were killed when an Israeli air strike targeted a vehicle near a gathering of Palestinians receiving aid in the southern area of Khan Younis south of the enclave.
According to residents and a Hamas source, the vehicle targeted near a crowd receiving flour belonged to security personnel responsible for overseeing the delivery of aid shipments into Gaza.
Among the 32 killed, at least seven died in an Israeli strike on a house in central Gaza City, according to a statement from the Gaza Civil Defense and the official Palestinian news agency WAFA early on Saturday.
The Gaza Civil Defense also reported that one of its officers was killed in attacks in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, bringing the total number of civil defense workers killed since October 7, 2023, to 88.
Earlier on Saturday, WAFA reported that three employees of the World Central Kitchen, a US-based, non-governmental humanitarian agency, were killed when a civilian vehicle was targeted in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
The World Central Kitchen has not yet commented on the incident.