filipino workers forcibly taken to build u.s. embassy in baghdad

This is video footage from an Oversight Committee hearing examining the performance of the State Department and its contractors in the construction of the new $600 million U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The Committee reviewed questions regarding the embassy compound construction as well as allegations of labor abuse through improper contracting practices.

Here, Rory Mayberry, a former subcontractor employee for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, gives opening testimony in which he witnessed U.S.-hired contractors in Iraq essentially kidnapping Filipino workers to build the embassy: Hearing on US Embassy in Iraq: Mayberry's Opening. The workers thought they had signed up to work in Dubai hotels, when in fact they were being sent to Baghdad for construction—a fact no one told them until the plane took off and the captain announced their destination. More here: US Congress told: 51 Filipinos smuggled into Iraq. Crazy! Distrubing! Yet... not surprising.