Editorial

Iraqi Slavery: Kenyan woman survives 10 months of slavery and rape in Iraq

A Kenyan woman, Lucia Nekesa, has escaped from the jaws of slavery in Iraq after 10 months. The woman who hails from Maweni in Nyali was promised heaven when boarding

  • PublishedSeptember 24, 2019

A Kenyan woman, Lucia Nekesa, has escaped from the jaws of slavery in Iraq after 10 months. The woman who hails from Maweni in Nyali was promised heaven when boarding the plane to the Middle East country but what she went through was the exact opposite.

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Lucia has been subjected to rape and torture throughout the 10months to an extent serving time in an Iraqi prison.

“I was ‘sold’ to a cruel Iraqi agent i only knew by the name of Rahab who ran the agency with her brother, together with other 12 women they used to beat us claiming that we were lazy,” she explains.

Rape

Running away and reporting to the police only made it worse as they returned her to Rahab who in turn changed her employer to one individual who used to rape her and other workers. Among the workers were two other Kenyan women.

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The mother of five decided to contact her husband who in turn contacted Haki Africa who started a follow up on the issue. After getting wind of the unraveling situation, Rahab demanded 200,000 shillings from Nekesa’s family to get her back to Kenya but not before the Iraqi authorities raided the ‘rapist agent’s’ agency and arresting Nekesa and the other 12 women.

Sentenced

They were remanded for 3 weeks before being taken to court and sentenced to one month in jail for being in the country illegally.

“In jail, we were mixed with prostitutes, madwomen, those who sold their kidneys, a lot of different characters. I left three Kenyan women in that jail,” Nekesa explained. After a month in jail, her documents had been processed and she made a journey back to her home country.

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She is grateful to Haki Africa for helping her, although she suffered on the way back after she slept at the Baghdad Airport for 3 days after being abandoned by Iraqi authorities.

She is calling upon the Kenyan authorities to intervene and flush out rogue agencies leading Kenyans to slavery. She also says that she met a group of 50 women in an airport in UAE with 47 of them heading to Saudi Arabia which she tried talking them out.

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