Life of Filipino Maid Hangs in the Balance in Kuwait

She had come to Kuwait to work and support her family back home; now Jakatia Pawa is to be executed.
Life of Filipino Maid Hangs in the Balance in Kuwait
1/27/2010
Updated:
1/27/2010
She had come to Kuwait to work and support her family back home, but last week Jakatia Pawa found out that she was to be executed.

The Filipino maid bowed her head in the docks, as her sentence was upheld in the Kuwait City appeals court for the murder of her employer’s 22-year-old daughter in 2007. However, the apparent lack of evidence against Pawa, has convinced rights activists and Philippine officials that the sentence is a miscarriage of justice.

The knife used in the murder did not have the woman’s fingerprints on it, and there were no bloodstains on her dress or body, Ricardo Endaya, the Philippine ambassador to Kuwait, was quoted as saying.
Pawa claimed that the daughter was murdered by the family in an honor killing, after it emerged that the victim had allegedly been having an affair with a neighbor.

Philippine officials announced that the country’s vice president, Noli de Castro, will visit the Emir of Kuwait in the coming weeks to appeal for clemency on behalf of the maid. “The vice president will carry a letter from President Arroyo addressed to the Emir of Kuwait interceding for the life of Ms. Pawa,” a spokesman for the Philippine Foreign Affairs Department said in a statement.

According to the statement, the Philippine government would pay the victim’s family “blood money” in exchange for the sentence to be commuted.

The amount was not disclosed.

Pawa’s life now rests in the hands of the Emir, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber Al Sabah, who has final approval on death sentences in the country. It is understood that the decision will be made within two to four weeks.

If Al Sabah decides to commute the death sentence for a Filipino maid, it will not be the first time.
Last year the Emir pardoned May Vecina, a Filipino nanny who sliced open the throat of her employer’s seven-year-old son in what was said to have been a case of “temporary insanity,” after months of abuse from her host family. Vecina’s sentence was initially commuted to life imprisonment but she was later repatriated, after the personal intervention of the Philippine president, Gloria Arroyo.

Most countries from South and Southeast Asia who have embassies in Kuwait are inundated with appeals for help from domestic workers who are fleeing abuse.

Last year, more than 700 Indonesian maids were repatriated—many of them from the embassy’s shelter. The country later barred domestic workers from going to Kuwait.

Owing to the problem of the abuse of domestic workers, Kuwait has been placed on a human rights blacklist, the lowest rank in the U.S. state department’s annual human trafficking report.

Despite the censure, the country has done little to improve the conditions of maids, which many liken to slavery. A draft labor law this year exempted domestic workers from protection, attracting the ire of Human Rights Watch in a report last week. “Omitting domestic workers, who need the most protection, signals to employers that the door remains open for abuse and exploitation,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of the NGO.

According to the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, almost 8 million Filipinos—around 10 percent of the country’s population—are migrant workers. Many are working in the Middle East, where there is a huge demand for domestic workers; and the Philippine’s economy is heavily reliant on their remittances.

Philippine officials estimate that 150,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, including 65,000 domestics.