BEIRUT (AsiaNews): Amid the war launched by Israel against Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is affecting the entire population, Christians included, another tragedy has been relegated to the margins of the news cycle and ignored by governments and the international community: that of migrant workers, especially from Asia and Africa, who have been living in the country for many years and who now find themselves under Israeli bombs without shelter or prospects of repatriation.
Faced with more Israeli airstrikes, groups of immigrants have raised this critical issue as they are unable to access shelters already crammed with Lebanon’s internally displaced—officially over 120,000 but the number could be up to a million.
In the chaos, migrant workers from Ethiopia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Sudan have come out of the perennial shadow in which they live to escape the bombings.
The parish of St. Joseph in Beirut is among the ones that have opened its doors and offered shelter to anyone in need, including tired and hungry women huddle around a table while others wait for a meal, their eyes and ears turned to Israeli drones and missiles.
Every day more people arrive, dozens if not hundreds from southern Lebanon, from the east, and from the southern suburbs of the capital, an area considered a stronghold of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah, and for this reason, targeted with greater intensity.
Overnight the church, once a daytime shelter for migrants, became a refuge as Israeli airstrikes began, said Brother Michael Petro of the Jesuit Refugee Service.
“A family from our church arrived here [and] asked if they could stay. We said ‘yes’, and the next morning 30 people arrived, and then [another] 50,” said the Jesuit. “On the first day, we called every shelter in the country. We could not find space, either because they were full or because we were told shelters will not accept migrants.”
Dea Hage Chahine, a Lebanese activist stressed that migrants “also need help. They are just invisible, like third-class” citizens, she said angrily, adding that migrant workers often “don’t even have their own passports” or rights.
Kumiri Parara, a 48-year-old from Sri Lanka, arrived with her 12-year-old son, fleeing Sidon, in the south, under the bombs. She has been in Lebanon for 20 years and was married to a Palestinian before divorcing, then finding work as a domestic worker.
This is the type of job that usually falls to immigrants, many of whom came from the island nation to earn money to support relatives back home.
Parara said that her employers have also fled, but she has no news of them.
According to data for 2023 from the International Organisation for Migration, more than 160,000 migrants work in Lebanon, 65 per cent women. In fact, the number is likely much higher, even if many remain underground because they are undocumented or are in a legal limbo that might lead to their expulsion if identified.
In addition, the vast majority are in Lebanon under the so-called kafala system, a sponsorship process that regulates the presence of foreign workers but allows abuses and violations of human rights by the “bosses”.
The non-government organisation, Migrante International, is one of the few voices to address the issue and the emergency. IUt organised an online meeting on September 29 aimed, especially, at the Filipino community in Lebanon.
More than 11,000 Filipinos, finding themselves in limbo and unable to flee, have been waiting for weeks to go home as promised by the Philippine government. The evacuation should have begun immediately after the start of the much-feared ground invasion by the Israeli army but the issue remains unresolved.
During the conference, workers expressed frustration with what they believe was a slow response from their government.
For Joanna Concepcion, president of Migrante International, no one is “mentioning the difficulties or the current struggles our OFWs [overseas foreign workers] are going through, which is why they are hesitant or unable to repatriate, nor are they sharing the full extent of the situation.”
Another migrant, Christine Lao, noted how the ongoing conflict has created a terrifying atmosphere for those still in Lebanon.
“After being here for so long, we never considered returning home, but now it has become a matter of life and death. We can no longer hold back,” she explained. “We have a child with us who keeps asking, ‘Are we going to die when the bombings happen?’”
According to the Philippine Department of Migrant Workers, repatriation from Lebanon of just a dozen or more Filipinos was rescheduled for October 3. Originally, it was supposed to happen on September 26.
