Lost: Ethiopian Housemaid… and 1 million Israeli clusterbombs

It is common to see adverts in Lebanese newspapers like this one:

LOST
ETHIOPIAN HOUSEMAID
M***** G**********
left her employer’s house on 17-8-08
and did not return. Whomever
employs her will be subject to
legal pursuit. (961) 3 ******
(961) 9 ******

(Daily Star, 25/08/2008, printed edition)

Don’t you just love the sincere worry about the poor paperless woman’s whereabouts that oozes from this ad? As long as nobody else is ‘illegally employing’ their ‘property’, these people obviously couldn’t care less. Is she living in the street? Has she got something to eat? Has she been kidnapped and forced to prostitute herself to fat gulfies in a ’super night club’? Whatever… In Lebanon, housemaids have been ’suiciding’ or ‘dying while trying to escape from the nth floor flats of their employers’ at the rate of one a week. Criminal investigations are virtually never deemed necessary by the Lebanese police force, or consist entirely of taking down the uncontested statements of their employers, who typically declare that their maids were ‘depressed’… As in the gulf countries, these poor women are often treated horribly and cruelly to the point where it’s not exaggerated to speak of slavery or worse. This finally seems to filter through to mainstream local and foreign media who have been paying some long-overdue attention to this ‘phenomenon’ recently.

In other news, one Belgian sapper has been killed today and another wounded while demining some of the lethal toys Israel has so generously distributed throughout the south of Lebanon, and which have since killed 30 Lebanese citizens and wounded over 220 more. The bulk of the UN’s demining programs will reportedly soon be stopped, moreover, because of lack of funds…