Black (and Asian) lives don’t matter in Lebanon

This is Lebanon is the name of a group to protect migrants in Lebanon. The stories of the migrant workers reveals a system of slavery and sexual abuse for people of color who went to Lebanon hoping to make money as domestic workers.

The stories are horrific.

Do black lives matter in Lebanon? More than two domestic workers die every week. All Black and disposable. Faustina: “I feel so weak. My body is swollen, I can barely stand for five minutes. I don't want to die.”

A domestic worker from Ghana named Faustina Tay was killed by her employer in March after months of beatings and torture and sexual abuse and false promises of her being paid. When she wanted to go home her employers, Hussein Dia and Mona Nasrallah, told her that she had to work for two more months for free and they would pay for her tickets. They lied and then accused her of theft, threatening her with jail unless she worked several more months as a slave. The exact circumstances of her death are still unclear but she was found fallen from a fourth story window, her head hitting the pavement first, shortly after telling her story to the NGO. The employers even got a Lebanese doctor to lie for them about her injuries to claim it was a suicide while he ignored her known injuries from being beaten.

A similar story is told here, of a Filipino woman who was a slave for 13 years working for a wealthy Lebanese family – the husband the cousin of Walid Jumblatt. When she complained yet again about not being paid the woman of the house – a lawyer - accused her of theft and had her jailed. She says that another domestic worker was raped by the husband of the family;  the wife was infertile. They took the boy she gave birth to  and deported her.

The site has story after story about workers, many African, who are treated literally like slaves. Today.

Do black lives matter in Lebanon and in other Arab countries that bring in domestic workers from Africa?