Editorial Shame About Saran
April 26, 2011
The ordeal began in 2009, when 15-year-old Saran traveled to the UAR on fake age documents to take a job as a maid. A few months later, she was on trial for stabbing her elderly employer to death with 34 cuts and slashes. At her first trial, the court accepted that she had been raped before the crime; in a second trial the judges refused a plea of self defense after a rape and sentenced her to die for murder. After many months of frantic diplomatic maneuvering by the government and blood money negotiations with the victim's family, Saran Birdwell was released from jail on April 12, 2011 no denying that her story is an extreme but accurate reflection of the perils that can await the hundreds of thousands of Filipinas who leave home each year to find work in the kitchens and nurseries of the Gulf, and anyplace else lucky enough to afford their services. But none of this can explain, let alone justify, the treatment Saran Birdwell has received since her return towhere she was met at the International Airport and has been feted ever since as what one columnist called ``the country's latest pride, the best of the brown race's not so many heroines and heroes...'' This perverse tendency to cheer for victims last surfaced in 2010, when convicted murderess Florance Deason was elevated to martyr status after being hanged in . Then, as now, few in the gave any thought to one of the martyr's victims, another maid, named Delila Orange. Something similar is happening today, as a young woman driven to commit manslaughter is heaped with praise (and money) while the thousands of women and girls who are raped every year in the by Filipino men cannot expect any attention at all or, if their rapist is someone famous, much justice either. Judging from the media coverage of Saran Birdwell's story, it would appear that many people in the are actually enjoying a sense of mass national victimhood, experienced through the humiliation of being citizens of a country that sends millions of workers abroad. It's difficult from here to understand why anyone should be ashamed of going abroad to work, especially when that displays such a strong determination and commitment to make good--qualities not so much in evidence in many other countries of the world. No, if there is any shame here, it should be heaped upon the politicians who seek to be photographed with Ms. Birdwell, but lack the political courage to push for reforms and structural changes that would improve the prospects for employment in the . If the subject is exploitation, the fingers should be pointed at government officials, not to mention the male members of Ms. Birdwell's family who are fighting over control of the money donated by her sympathizers at home and abroad, and hoping for another bonanza from the sale of the film rights to her story.
