The performers were part of an outreach team, composed of 7 Filipino community members, the assistant labor attaché of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Beirut and 3 Lebanese staff of Caritas Lebanon Migrants Center (CLMC). 

 

They visited the Lebanese General Security’s retention center last Thursday (October 13) to bring Christmas cheer to approximately 100 migrant women detainees. 

 

“We teamed up, each one of us from different groups and sectors, to reach out to those in the prison cells,” said Mirasol Serrano, who represented the Filipino community in Hamra.

 

“Actually, I cried,” said Vangie Gelacio, describing her reaction after catching a glimpse of the women detainees. “But I had to stop it. I had to put a smile on my face because that’s what we needed to show them, to give them joy for just a moment.”

 

Wearing Filcom T-shirts and red Christmas hats, the group went from one cell to another, performing an upbeat African dance and Christmas songs from around the world, including the Filipino classic “Pasko Na Naman.”  The inmates requested for encore performances from the group. 

 

The program wrapped up with games, such as "stop dance" and "apple dance." 

 

With the assistance of CLMC and POLO Beirut, the group also donated 150 gift bags of food items and toiletries, and fresh food such as doughnuts and Arabic bread. 

 

“Through our continuous collaboration for the past six or seven years, the General Security has been referring vulnerable cases to our shelters,” said Hessen Sayah, project manager at CLMC. “Especially the victims of trafficking — they are referred from the retention center to the Caritas shelters for all kinds of services: medical, social, psychological and legal.”

 

Currently, there are approximately 30 to 35 Filipinos in prisons throughout Lebanon, according to Edwin Batallones, assistance to nationals officer at the Philippine embassy in Beirut. Twenty are in the Adlieh retention center alone.

 

Batallones estimated the detainees usually stay between 3 weeks to 3 months in the prisons, with an average of 1 month.

 

“With immigration officials and investigators, we closely monitor our migrant prisoners to properly discern what they need as far as repatriation is concerned,” he said.

 

 Next, the group is planning to head to northern Lebanon to reach out to migrant prisoners in Tripoli.