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In the past few weeks, a bit under the radar, amidst all of the national news, I have been following the alleged plight of 51 Filipinos who found themselves kidnapped and forced to take part in the building of The US Embassy in The Green Zone of Baghdad, Iraq. These 51 Filipinos had been told that they would be going to Dubai, only to be told a within a few minutes into the travel that they were going to Iraq.

This will be a first of a series of articles that will be written regarding this incident. The investigation is still ongoing, and there’s not a whole lot of definite information that is coming out except the information that is being given to us by the U.S State Department (under the Bush Administration), First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting Company (the suspect), and our own officials (trustworthy?).

US Congress Oversight Committee

On July 26th, the oversight committee in The U.S Congress held a hearing on the “Allegations of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse at the New U.S. Embassy in Iraq.” The hearing examined mostly the performance of The US State Department as well as its contractors in the building of The US Embassy in Iraq.

The $600 million dollar US Embassy project is supposed to be finished by this September (originally June), but due to the alleged poor construction of the Guard Base, it seems that maybe the problems uncovered in the Guard Base project are signs that indicate that there will also be problems on the main project of the actual US Embassy in Iraq. Included in the hearings were testimony from a former Employee of First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting Company or simply First Kuwaiti, as well as a former subcontractor working as a medic. In these testimonies you will hear that there were foreign workers, including Filipinos who were mislead and were basically forced to go to Iraq to work on this grand US Embassy project. First Kuwaiti is alleged to have practiced labor abuse through improper contracting practices including telling Filipino workers about working in Dubai which turned out to be a lie, and having deplorable working conditions once these workers arrived at the construction site in Baghdad.

Rory Mayberry Testimony

The following video is the testimony of Rory Mayberry, a former contractor for First Kuwaiti who worked as a medic, and testified that he flew with 51 Filipinos last year from Kuwait. It was this flight in which he said that the Filipinos did not know they were going to Iraq and thought they were actually going to Dubai. Their passports showed that they were going to Dubai. Since 2004 there has been a ban on Filipino Workers going to Iraq and thus Kuwaiti customs would not allow travel of Filipinos if they knew these men were headed for Iraq.

It was only after the plane took off and when the pilot informed the passengers that they were headed to Iraq that at which point, all hell broke loose. It wasn’t until a security officer for First Kuwaiti waived a machine gun when things finally quieted down.

I was afraid of blowing the whistle on this because I didn’t want to end up outside the walls of the Green Zone and left to fend for myself. I stayed in Baghdad at the site of the U.S. Embassy for a total of 5 days before I was sent home. Once I got home, I contacted the military about what I witnessed. After much delay and e-mail traffic, the military told me that in fact, the State Department is in charge of the embassy construction.

Well, Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were headed for Baghdad, all you-know-what broke lose on that airplane. People started shouting. It wasn’t until a security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP-5 in the air that people settled down. They realized they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad.

Let me spell it out clearly. I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work on the U.S. Embassy. They had no passports because they were confiscated at the Kuwait airport. When the airplane touched down at Baghdad airport, they where loaded into buses and taken away. Later, I found that they were being smuggled into the Green Zone. They had no IDs, no passports, nothing. They were being smuggled in passed U.S. security forces. I had a trailer all to myself in the Green Zone. But they were packed 25 to 30 in a trailer, and every day they went out to work on the construction of the embassy without the proper safety equipment.

It’s a sad fact indeed, when the construction of a US embassy is being done by mostly “Third Country Nationals”, with almost no Americans involved. In my view, this has a twofold objective, and that it cuts the cost, as well as it paves way for deplorable labor practices in the league of slavery itself.

By the way, Third Country Nationals or TCNs are what they call foreign nationals coming from countries such as The Philippines, Nepal, Pakistan, and Ghana.

Think about it, if these had been Americans, First Kuwaiti would’ve had their asses sued all the way to the moon. But, since nationals such as Filipinos are involved, they must think that the countries of these TCNs wouldn’t put up much of a fight. And I guess, in a sense, maybe their calculated risk has some merit. Right now, our own government is taking lip service from The US State Department and First Kuwaiti as fact. Words coming from the main suspects of an alleged cover-up.

John Owens Testimony

John Owens is a former employee of First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting Company. The following video is his testimony that basically corroborates many of the sick details that Rory Mayberry gave in the same oversight committee hearing.

I also want to touch briefly on the issue of human trafficking. I believe I witnessed it. When flying from Kuwait to Baghdad, I saw a bunch of workers with tickets to Dubai. Mine was the only one that said Baghdad. When I asked the First Kuwaiti manager, he said—“Shhh, don’t say anything. If Kuwaiti customs knows they’re going to Iraq, they won’t let them on the plane.” When we landed, these workers were taken away in busses. There was nobody manning the customs station at the airport in Baghdad—I just walked through on my way back to the Green Zone.

First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting Company

This is not the first time, or even the second time, that First Kuwaiti has had problems with regards to allegations of Labor rights and other Labor misconducts. Many international newspapers have written about this company, including the fact that The US Department of Defense has itself conducted investigations into these alleged worker and labor misconducts.

Only 11 Filipinos, Not 51?

And yet, as the Mayberry testimony indicates, even he was afraid of blowing the whistle while in Iraq, for the fear of being dumped outside of the Greenzone and left to fend for himself. And thus, can we truly believe the words coming out of Iraq from these certain Filipinos, for all we know, they have the same fears that Mayberry had when he was assigned in Iraq.

I cannot believe, that our Fact-finding committee, is choosing to believe all of this, without securing these Filipinos first. The main objective is to secure these Filipinos, and stop believing the words that are coming out of the accused themselves.

It’s the same situation we are in with regards to the MILF and the Basilan Ambush. Apparently, in any Philippine Government investigation nowadays, we are supposed to take the words of the accused, and probably masterminds, and use them as fact.

Doesn’t this raise any red flags with anyone else, or is it just me?

What really gets me all riled up is that the statements coming from our very own Department of Foreign affairs are being used as fact in most international papers, and even the Associated Press. Thus, the “fact” is that only 11 of those 51 workers were Filipinos. First Kuwaiti, only a few days ago, went on a massive Ad Campaign offensive to clear its name. In those ads, they denied any wrongdoings, clarified there were only 11 Filipinos, and that none of their workers were ever forced to go to Iraq.

With the statements coming from our own government’s “initial investigations”, international media seems to think that the number 11 has been corroborated and substantiated. However, my own research into this matter, has shown that VP De Castro and the fact-finding committee set up by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has not shown as to where they received the information that there were only 11 Filipinos aboard that plane.

Source of Information?

As far as I can ascertain, because our fact-finding committee has failed to actually set foot on the construction site itself, has only spoken to 5 Filipinos in Iraq through video conference, and has only been in communication with the US State Department and First Kuwaiti, it is very much possible that both statements coming from First Kuwaiti and our own officials stating to the fact that there were only 11 Filipinos could actually be coming from only one source. Again, there has been no indication as to where their information is coming from.

This is the same tactic used during the Weapons of Mass Destruction argument used by the Bush Administration in which Cheney himself leaked information to The New York Times that Saddam had been trying to procure Nukes, and when Cheney gave speeches all over the country, he used the same information he leaked to The New York Times to show that order to substantiate his statements. Yet, as we all know, there was only one source to the Weapons of Mass Destruction argument, and that was The Bush Administration itself.

As the oversight committee has shown, The US State Department has been stonewalling its efforts to conduct a proper and thorough investigation into this matter.

We mustn’t blindly accept statements from public officials and even entire governments, because of self preservations, oftentimes, information that is given to the public may be distorted or even be flat out lies. Demanding proof, transparency, and accountability should be the focus.

Especially, when the lives of our very own heroic Overseas Filipino Workers are at stake.

We Need More Sources of Information

Unless, De Castro et al. knows exactly who the almost 7000 Filipinos working in Iraq are, how they got there, when they arrived, the conditions they are working in, and how many of them are working or have been working on The US Embassy, then I don’t think it’s fair for De Castro and this so-called fact finding committee to take the words of First Kuwaiti as fact. It’s only understandable that First Kuwaiti will try to defend itself, and thus may not be the most reliable source of information. Officials have already agreed that there was a lack of strict overseeing of who exactly comes in and out of Iraq for work, and thus, without clear cut evidence, De Castro and others should not have issued such statements especially in light that it is only a preliminary investigation and that it has only been a week or so before they even found out about this specific information.

As I have said, during the hearing, it was found out that there were almost no US State Department officials to oversee the project, and that even the workforce consisted of only Third Country Nationals. I am inclined to believe the oversight committee that held the hearing last July 26 at The US Congress, and we should demand a more thorough investigation and inquiries into this matter, and not just video conferences of a few Filipinos in Iraq.

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