Escape from Syria: Repatriated Filipinas recount tales of horror

MANILA, Philippines — Filipino Ruth Pana remembered one of the sons of her Syrian employer being killed by government forces in Damascus.

“His chest was opened like there was large steel that passed through it,” Pana said, sobbing. “Do you know that we buried him at the back of the house because there were no more cemeteries?”

Pana, 29, said the man she worked for was supportive of the opposition and his son was killed during a recent demonstration.

She was among nearly 300 Filipino workers — young women who escaped unemployment at home for jobs abroad as maids and babysitters — who fled the worsening civil war in the biggest single repatriation negotiated between the Philippines and Syria.

They were flown to Manila on Tuesday by the International Organization of Migration and brought with them the tales of horror and sleepless nights as violence between government forces and rebels fighting to overthrow the regime of President Bashar Assad spiraled out of control.

Pana, who escaped first to the Philippine Embassy in the Syrian capital and then to Manila aboard an evacuation flight, also

After the family’s house where she lived and worked was shattered by bullets, they all fled to a neighbor’s basement to escape being caught in the crossfire between government troops and the rebel Free Syrian forces.

She said she liked her employer and had worked for him and his family for three years until 2010, and then returned just months before the fighting erupted in March 2011.

Pana said a military camp behind her employer’s residence was occupied by the rebels but the military launched a counter-attack and bombardment last week using helicopters.

“If you could just see the bodies, oh brother, you would be throwing up,” she said in an interview.

She said when her employer and his family moved to a rented house, she made contact with the Philippine Embassy, which sent a car that took her away to the care of Filipino diplomats until she and the others were repatriated.

Pana said her employer initially didn’t want her to leave, saying she was still under contract, but then relented.

“If it were not for the war, I would not have returned home,” said Glemer Cabidog, 34, who was a caretaker of a villa in Damascus for a wealthy Kuwaiti businessman who had fled the war. “We asked permission from our employer but after three months … he said he won’t allow us to leave. That’s why we escaped.”

Cabidog, who was paid $200 a month, said she and another Filipino worker at the villa decided to leave after a clash two weeks ago between Syrian forces and demonstrators in their neighborhood.

“That was when we decided to leave,” she said. “We didn’t want to die there.”

She said they made arrangements with the Philippine Embassy to pick them up a week later.

She said her employer has stayed in Kuwait for the last nine months. She said she would get food and other provisions by requesting supplies from one of his secretaries who would have them delivered to the compound.

The 263 Filipinos who returned home, many shedding tears of joy, had sought refuge at the embassy compound until Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario traveled to Syria last week to organize their evacuation.

“I was scared and I really wanted to go home. Now that I am home, I am very happy,” said Sasulaya Abdula.

Another maid, Nurmina Canapia, she escaped her demanding employer by sliding down a rope after he refused to let her quit her post as war raged around them.

Canapia pleaded to leave the country along with hundreds of other maids, but her Syrian boss insisted she stay and see out the final year of her three-year contract.

The last straw came when a bomb exploded outside her employer’s home in Aleppo and still he would not let her go, despite the Philippine consulate advising all Filipinos evacuate, the 33-year-old said.

“My employer was so mad. He said I would not be able to leave till I finished my three-year contract,” Canapia told AFP.

“I climbed down from the balcony of the house with a rope. Then I called a taxi and went to the Philippine consulate in Aleppo,” the mother of three recalled.

“My employer went to the consulate and tried to get me back, but the consulate would not let me go. They said all Filipinos must leave Syria,” she said.

After reaching the consulate, Canapia, along with another 262 domestic maids from the Philippines, were driven to Damascus where they were flown by charter plane to Manila.

Some of the women were crying and were comforted by others as they waited for their papers to be processed by officers from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), a government agency in charge of nearly 10 million Filipinos who work overseas.

Del Rosario said up to 600 more workers want to return home.

The rest of the estimated 3,000 Filipino workers decided to stay in Syria for the time being, he said.

The Philippine government has repatriated more than 2,100 workers from Syria since December last year.

One Filipina was killed in the war, when she and her employers were ambushed by unknown gunmen in a car, del Rosario told reporters.

“Our policy is not to leave anyone behind. Anyone who wants to come home, we will bring him (or her) back,” del Rosario said.

The government cannot force Filipinos to return, del Rosario added, saying it was difficult to find all of its nationals since many, including minors, had entered Syria to work illegally.

One of the repatriated minors, 17-year-old Archelle Araojo, said she had worked in Aleppo since she was 15 and had been terrified by the outbreak of violence there.

Earlier this month she was on the balcony of her employer’s home when she saw helicopters and tanks arriving to attack a group of rebels.

“I was so scared. My employer told us all to just sit down in the bathroom. We stayed there for days. We had nothing to eat because the stores were all closed and we couldn’t go out,” she told AFP.

During a lull in the fighting the entire household fled by car to Damascus, 310 kilometers away, where her employers dropped her off at the Philippine embassy with advice to go home, while the family fled to Lebanon.

Araojo, who said she no longer wanted to work abroad, told AFP virtually all the money she sent home from Syria had been spent on her ailing mother, leaving her with savings of just $100.

Araojo is one of almost 10 million Filipinos who have gone to work around the world, earning money which they can send home to their impoverished homeland. (AP and AFP)