This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Campaigners in Lebanon have condemned the country’s “oppressive” treatment of migrant workers after a Kenyan woman who was the victim of a “mob attack” was deported.

Footage of the assault, which took place in a suburb of Beirut on 17 June, went viral on social media, prompting outrage and demands for an apology from the Kenyan government. It showed two women, named Shamila and Rosa, being dragged by their hair and hit repeatedly by a crowd of people while others watched.

The incident drew attention to the mistreatment of migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, where employment laws for foreign workers have been likened to modern-day slavery.

Salim Jreissati, Lebanon’s justice minister, condemned the attack, calling it shocking and abhorrently racist.

Kenyan domestic worker assaulted by mob in Lebanon faces deportation Read more

Shamila and Rose were arrested after the incident in Bourj Hammoud, together with two of their attackers, one of whom was an offduty military officer.

Shamila’s lawyer, Nermine Sibai, said her client was deported on Sunday for being in violation of her visa. This was despite assurances from Lebanese authorities that a deportation order had not been issued. The case against her attackers was still going on.

“We found out 48 hours before she was deported, we didn’t have time to appeal,” said Sibai. “They originally informed us of a deportation order, but the next day issued a formal statement denying they had made a decision. They were dishonest and ambiguous from the start.”

Campaigners have reacted angrily to the decision, blaming the sponsorship (kafala) system through which migrant domestic workers are employed for denying them justice.

“Instead of getting access to justice as the target of a brutal mob assault, Shamila was criminalised for her status as an undocumented worker,” said the Anti-Racism Movement, which also lambasted the “oppressive” kafala system. “Shamila’s experience [of a] racist, sexist, classist assault is definitely not an isolated nor singular account of unprovoked violence against a black migrant woman in Lebanon.”

An estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers live in Lebanon. Most come from Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Kenya, to work as live-in maids.

Abuse and non-payment of wages is common for migrant workers in Lebanon, leading many to run away from the homes where they work. Because the kafala system ties their legal status to their employer, many are detained and deported when they leave, even when they have been the victims of crime.

Sibai said she would continue to represent Shamila in the case against her attackers. “We will fight for her in her absence,” she said.