Beirut, Lebanon -- Lebanon prides itself on its image as a melting pot on the Mediterranean: an ancient bastion of civilization boasting a diverse tapestry of cultures and creeds.
But scratch the surface, and it becomes apparent that not everyone fits into the country's cosmopolitan self-image.
Many migrants and
mixed-race Lebanese, particularly those of Asian and African origin, say
they encounter racism on a regular basis.
Nepalese woman Priya
Subeydi told CNN she plans to leave the country soon, as she does not
want her nine-month-old son growing up feeling like a second-class
citizen.
"Every day we face racism," she said. "I just want to let him to grow in my own country."
Subeydi came to Lebanon
as one of the more than 200,000 migrant domestic workers in the country,
lured from mostly African and Asian countries by the promise of higher
wages and steady employment in upper-middle class homes where household
chores are viewed as beneath the family.
Today, Subeydi works in a
migrant center in Beirut, providing assistance and support for domestic
workers, some of whom, vulnerable in their new homes, face a grim
reality of confinement, abuse, withheld payments and discriminatory
treatment.
Lebanon's treatment of migrant domestic workers has been thrust into the international spotlight in recent years.
In 2009 the country witnessed a spate of suicides among foreign maids, and last year a 33-year-old Ethiopian woman killed herself shortly after being filmed being beaten by a Lebanese man on a Beirut street.
The U.N. special
rapporteur on slavery urged the Lebanese government to carry out a full
investigation into the death. Ethiopia had banned citizens from
traveling to Lebanon as domestic workers because of concerns over their
lack of legal protection, although the ban was widely circumvented.
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But it's not only
domestic workers who face racist treatment. Renee Abisaad is the
daughter of a Lebanese mother and Nigerian father, who moved to the
country when she was 11.
The engineering student
-- a subject of a photo exhibition of mixed-race Lebanese intended to
challenge social attitudes about race -- said that dealing with ethnic
slurs had become the norm, and she planned to leave the country once she
finished her studies.
She said she felt she was not accepted and looked down on because of her ethnicity.
"I never felt Lebanese
to be honest," she told CNN. "They assume that you are a prostitute, you
are a maid, you are someone low class."
The unequal treatment
meted out to people of other ethnic backgrounds has prompted a group of
activists in Lebanon, in collaboration with migrant community leaders,
to form the Anti Racism Movement (ARM), committed to documenting, exposing and challenging racist behaviour and attitudes in the country.
In a recent campaign,
the group conducted undercover stings at the country's beach resorts,
where it found an Ethiopian women was turned away from going swimming
and falsely told a "members only" policy was in place.
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The club's actions
contravened a decree issued by the Ministry of Tourism last summer
barring resorts from discriminating on the basis of race, nationality or
disability.
Lebanon's Minister of Tourism, Fadi Abboud, said the stance on racism made sense for both moral and practical reasons.
"If people think that we
are a racial country, I think we can kiss tourism goodbye, so for me
this is very serious, and it can only happen once," he said. "We let
them know if it happens (another) time, we close them for one week -- if
it happens again, we close them for good."
ARM's general
coordinator, Farah Salka, said such measures against blatant
discrimination were welcome and necessary. But truly tackling racism
would require a more profound shift -- for individuals to re-examine and
dismiss deeply ingrained personal prejudices.
"It's a problem that is
grounded in each in the way that we have been brought up, the way that
we are not taught anything about accepting differences," she said. "You
can go to school for 15 years, go to college, become a doctor, but
you're never ever taught the basics of how to be with other human beings
in this country."
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