ILOILO City – A party-list advocating for overseas Filipino workers’ (OFWs) rights and welfare does not see the punishment of death by hanging carried out on the employers of slain Ilongga overseas domestic worker Joanna Demafelis, simply because the Kuwaiti government is not in a position to enforce the judgment.
“The Kuwaiti government does not have custody of the convicts so they cannot carry out the penalty,” said Rep. Aniceto Bertiz III of ACTS-OFW party-list.
A Kuwaiti court found guilty of murder Lebanese Nader Essam Assaf and his Syrian wife Mona Hassoun. On April 1, it sentenced them – in absentia – to death by hanging.
“The husband is in Lebanon while the wife is in Syria. Both Lebanon and Syria are separate states from Kuwait. No sovereign state will send its own citizen to another country just to be executed,” Bertiz said.
The couple was arrested in Syria in late February. While Syrian authorities detained Hassoun, they deported Assaf to Lebanon.
“We are not even sure if the husband is in fact in custody in Lebanon,” said Bertiz.
As to the wife, he said, she is in Syria which is beset by civil war and has porous borders.
“There’s no telling where she is now. And the authorities there will not bother looking for her, considering the chaos there,” Bertiz said.
For the Demafelis family, the conviction of Joanna’s employers was an answered prayer. Demafelis’ elder brother Joejet said they prayed for justice on Maundy Thursday, March 29, at the Manila Cathedral where their parents Crisanto and Eva participated in the traditional washing-of-the-feet rite spearheaded by Manila Archbishop Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle.
More than a year after she was reported missing in 2016, Demafelis’ body bore torture marks and was found stuffed in a freezer in the abandoned apartment of her employers on Feb. 6, 2018. She was from Sara, Iloilo.
Sen. Panfilo Lacson said justice won’t be served until Demafelis’ killers are put to death.
“The conviction in absentia of the Lebanese/Syrian couple may appear like a Pyrrhic victory for Joanna’s family and the Filipino people until the execution of the sentence is finally carried out,” said Lacson.
On the other hand, Sen. Joel Villanueva hoped the conviction would not just be a “paper victory.”
“(The couple) should be made to face the consequence of what they did in Kuwait before we can even think of any talk with the family of Demafelis for forgiveness,” said Villanueva.
Bertiz also does not see President Rodrigo Duterte lifting the total ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to the tiny oil-rich emirate.
“We totally support the President who has made it very clear that he wants justice for Joanna, and he wants justice for all Filipino household service workers in Kuwait,” said Bertiz.
The President wants the Kuwaiti government and employers there to respect the basic rights of Filipino household serviceworkers to regular work hours and adequate rest and sleeping hours, regular days off work, and to have physical possession of their own passports.
“The President wants the Kuwaiti government to commit to enforce these rights so that employers there will comply,” Bertiz said.
Duterte earlier categorically said he wanted the Kuwaiti government and employers there to agree to his terms first before he would consider lifting the deployment ban.
Bertiz said any memorandum of understanding or any agreement that could not be effectively enforced by the Kuwaiti government would be useless.
“Employers there will not comply if they know they won’t be penalized anyway,” he said./PN
