When a Filipino worker is beheaded abroad
Whenever a Filipino worker is beheaded abroad, or is executed by decapitation, or is sentenced to die, there is something in all of us Filipinos that also dies with him, or with her.
When a Filipino or Filipinos die aboard a plane that was hit by terrorist missile in Ukraine or in Afghanistan, or is killed in Gaza in a crossfire between Israeli troops and Hamas rebel forces or perished in a conflagration aboard a vessel in the Caribbean, or being a Filipino seafarer aboard an ocean-going tanker, has been kidnapped by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, isn't it that we also experienced some kind of '' death'' in us?
Unless we have become too uncaring, too indifferent and too impervious to the pains and sufferings of our migrants abroad, that we only keep our peace, being engulfed in a seizure of helplessness and of indifference, we must be overcome or even overwhelmed by some feeling of outrage or at least, compassion for the families of the victims. For there are at least twelve million working Filipinos abroad, trying to earn as much dollars, ringgits, yuans, dinars, and yens in all sorts of jobs all around two hundred countries all over the world. From Saudi Arabia to Libya, from Kuwait to Oman, to Qatar and Bahrain, there are millions of engineers, nurses, domestic helpers (euphemistically patronized with the name ''household service workers'') who are working to death just to remit no less than twenty four billion US dollars to the Philippine economy.
All over Europe, from London to Paris, to Italy and Spain, from Denmark to Sweden to Norway, Austria, Switzerland, even in the tiny Luxembourg and Belgium, there are hundreds of hotel and restaurant workers, drivers, cooks, and waiters. There are career Filipinos who work for foreign governments in their bureaucracy and civil service, in their postal and police services. In the Silicon Valley and in Seattle, in Washington and in New York, we have teachers, doctors and nurses, we have clerks, storekeepers, and office assistants. And whenever they get into trouble with the law or with love and relationships, we are all affected somehow. They are either our family members or relatives or just friends and fellow Filipinos.
And so, I wonder why, the government is no longer raising a diplomatic protest against Russia or Ukraine or Libya or Saudi Arabia, if not in the same intensity that we were angered by the injustice against Sarah Balabagan, and the so-called denial of due-process against Flor Contemplacion. Why are we not affected at all by the beheading of a Filipino in Libya? Why are we keeping silent when a Filipina and her two innocent children were killed aboard Malaysian Airlines just as the Chinese people from Hong Kong were making noises when their relatives died in that unfortunate hostage drama in Luneta a few years back? Why are we letting these things pass without raising a howl, not even a whimper? Have we become too unfeeling?
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