Manama: The diplomatic saga involving the embassy in the Philippines in Kuwait is getting more dramatic every day as the Kuwaiti interior ministry announced that its inspectors had arrested two Filipinos who were enticing house workers to flee from their employers’ home.
The ministry on Sunday said that the two men, apparently embassy staff members, “confessed their crime” during their questioning “in addition to other similar offenses that had been committed in various areas of the country.”
The two suspects also admitted that they had been tasked with encouraging Filipinas working in their employers’ houses to flee, the ministry added.
“The authorities have launched investigations into such recurring cases following protests by citizens that their domestic helpers have been lured by strangers,” the ministry said.
Ambassador Renato Pedro Villa said that he was aware of the arrests and that the embassy’s attorney would follow up their case.
A security source told the daily that one suspect was arrested at the airport where he drove several house workers to fly back home.
The second suspect was arrested in Hawalli.
Kuwait and the Philippines have been embroiled in an ominous diplomatic row after officials in Manila and the ambassador in Kuwait City said they had “rescue teams” on the ground to help domestic helpers run away from their “abusive” employers.
Video clips showing “clandestine” operations that included the use of diplomatic vans were being carried out were posted by Filipino officials.
The remarks and the videos sparked anger in Kuwait and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned Ambassador Renato Pedro Villa on Friday and then again on Saturday.
Several lawmakers have expressed anger over the whole situation and some of them called for adopting a tough line towards the Philippines embassy that included declaring the ambassador a persona no grata if he did not hand over the suspects seen in the video clips.
On Sunday, Parliament Speaker Marzouq Al Ghanim joined in the fray and said that he rejected “any attempt to undermine Kuwait’s sovereignty, dignity and reputation by linking it to anomalous and bizarre incidents.”
“Anything that undermines Kuwait’s sovereignty and reputation will be addressed by the Foreign Ministry,” he told reporters at the parliament.
He confirmed that the ambassador had been summoned and briefed on the developments and that the foreign ministry was mulling several courses of action without elaborating.
The spat between the countries was initially triggered earlier this year when a Filipina maid’s body was found in a freezer.
Since then an arrest warrant has been submitted for the maid’s sponsors—a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife—who apparently fled the country.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to ban hundreds of thousands of Filipinas from working as maids in the Middle East as he claimed domestic workers were being raped in Kuwait without providing proof.
Over two million Filipinos, many of them maids, are employed in the region, helping to prop up the Philippine economy with billions of dollars in salary remittances to their families each year.