Filipino medics quit en masse in Tripoli

Manila Times

Makati

 The Filipino medical workers in the Tripoli Medical Center in Libya have resigned en masse to protest the gang rape of a Filipina nurse who worked in the hospital.

Another Filipina nurse at the hospital said the facility has shut down after its Filipino employees went on a two-day “strike” following the incident.

“For two days no Filipino reported for duty so they closed it down,” the nurse told a relative in Manila through Facebook.

Filipinos make up three-fourths of the 1,500-bed centre’s medical staff, according to the nurse, who is on the second year of a three-year contract in Libya.

The 25-year-old nurse, who hails from Cavite, has requested that her name be withheld.

The Tripoli government is concerned that if all 3,000 Filipinos employed as medical workers in Libya leave the country, its health care system would collapse.

The nurse said she knew the rape victim because they worked on the same shift. “She’s single and is an only child,” she said.

The victim’s housing quarters was a five-minute walk from the hospital, the nurse said.

“The victim and another Filipina were on their way to work when a vehicle blocked their path,” she said. Four men got out and grabbed the two nurses.

They both ran but the victim tripped and the four men dragged her to the vehicle. Her companion got away.

“They took her to a house about 15 minutes away from the hospital,” the nurse said.

“Two more men were waiting there.”

The men took turns raping the victim. “They meant to kill her afterwards. But one of the men took pity on her and convinced the others to let her go.”

The group released the victim and she wandered through the streets until a search party found her.

“She had a wound in her face. She was crying,” the nurse said.

After the incident, the nurse said her mind is made up. “I’m going home, even if I have to swim my way out of Libya,” she said.

She is not the only one who wants to escape the chaos as the country is engulfed by a civil war.

“We have gone through [war] before, with Kadhafi, but now it’s much worse,” Paraskevi Athineou, a Greek woman living in Libya, said on Saturday.

“Chaos reigns. There is no government, we have no food, no fuel, no water, no electricity for hours on end,” she said.

Athineou was part of a group of 186 people evacuated from Tripoli by a Greek navy frigate which reached the port of Piraeus early yesterday.

In addition to 77 Greek nationals, there were 78 Chinese, 10 Britons, 12 Cypriots, seven Belgians, one Albanian and a Russian.

Among them were several diplomats, including the Chinese ambassador to Libya.

Libya has suffered chronic insecurity since Kadhafi’s overthrow in 2011, with the new government unable to check militias that helped to remove him and facing a growing threat from Islamist groups.

“So many people died to make the country better. But now we started killing each other in a civil war,” said Osama Monsour, a 35-year-old employed at a non-governmental organisation in Tripoli.

Fighting between rival militias in Tripoli has forced the closure of the city’s international airport, while Islamist groups are also battling army special forces in the eastern city of Benghazi.

“War is in the city . . . and we civilians are under fire from both sides,” Athineou said.