The plight of its migrant workers is back in the Philippines' national psyche, following Malaysia's wave of mass deportations of illegal Filipino workers from its eastern Sabah state.

The deportations, which peaked in recent weeks, were further marred by the death of 12 children and the rape of a 13-year-old deportee whose case has fueled anger toward Malaysia, a country that is home to tens of thousands of Filipino migrant workers.

Not since 1995, when Filipino domestic worker Flor Contemplacion was hanged in Singapore for a murder that many here thought she was innocent of, has there been such a display of national outrage here.

Filipino legislators have even threatened to renew the diplomatic row with Malaysia over Sabah, which the Philippines claimed as its territory in the 1960s. Activist groups have been holding protest rallies depicting Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad as ''an evil dictator''.

Last week's reports of the sexual abuse of the 13-year-old girl, identified by social workers only as ''Tsina'', have fueled this rise of public anger.

The girl was among 500 Filipinos being deported to the southern Philippines, just a boat ride from Sabah, last week when the rape, reportedly by a Malaysian policeman at a migrants' detention centre there, took place. Doctors here have also confirmed that rape took place.

Last week, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo felt compelled to write a personal letter to Mahathir, expressing her ''personal outrage and that of the Filipino people'' over the rape.

She called for a halt to the deportations, which are part of Malaysia's ongoing crackdown on some 380,000 illegal migrants, until more humane and orderly repatriation is in place.

Looking to soothe tensions between the neighbours, which come on the heels of a similar row between Malaysia and Indonesia, Mahathir on Sept 5 promised to hold ''a swift and thorough investigation "to verify the (rape) allegation''.

Subsequently, other Filipino women deportees have begun to tell of similar tales of sexual abuse at the hands of the Malaysian police while in captivity.

National survival

They are among thousands of foreign workers without valid documents who were jailed shortly after the Malaysian government's deadline for voluntary repatriation expired a month ago.

Most of the undocumented Filipinos were Muslims from the islands of Tawi-Tawi, Sulu, and Bongao in the southern Philippines.

Women's rights and labour activists here say that the cases of Tsina and other rape victims in Sabah are not entirely new and are not confined to Malaysia.

Former Senator Ernesto Herrera, a labour leader, cited a 1995 report by Tenaganita, a Kuala Lumpur-based group that works with migrants, which outlined the inhuman conditions inside detention camps for illegal workers based on interviews with 300 ex-detainees.

Citing the report, he said a description of conditions include ''physical abuse and torture, insufficient food and water, lack of medical care, sexual harassment of female migrants''.

The stories told by these deportees bring into focus the problems that migrant women workers and their families face worldwide.

''If there is any lesson to be learned here, it is that our first and overriding priority in foreign policy is the care and protection of our overseas workers, legal or illegal,'' wrote columnist Conrad de Quiros of the English-language daily Philippine Daily Inquirer this week.

''It is a matter of national survival. We have three million foreign workers spread throughout the world who are keeping this country afloat,'' he said. ''They brought in US41.6 billion (RM158.08 billion)over the last decade alone, the only thing that kept the peso from turning into Mickey Mouse money.''

World's largest organised labour exporter

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) blames legal and illegal intermediaries, recruitment agencies, overseas employment promoters, and manpower suppliers for the increase in labour migration not just in the Philippines, but in Asia.

It takes little inducement for people from poor countries like the Philippines where jobs are too few and pay too little to work in low-end jobs abroad.

Today, the country is the largest organised exporter of labour in the world, with seven million nationals working overseas in more than 100 countries. They work as seafarers, nurses, domestic workers, teachers and factory hands, among others.

For others, like Tsina and her family, life in Sabah may not have been easy, but it was better than the daily hunger that confronted them back home.

The last two decades have also seen a steady rise in the number of women working abroad as breadwinners of their families, so that they now make up 60 percent of the overseas workforce.

Though mostly educated, many end up ''at the bottom of the occupation hierarchy, generally shunned by local women because of low rewards, inferior working conditions and limited job prospects and security,'' according to an ILO report.

Others fall prey to illegal recruiters and still others resort to prostitution to stave off deportation, as depicted in some undocumented cases involving Filipino women in Sabah.

Susceptible to abuse

''Women migrant workers are more susceptible to maltreatment, physical and sexual abuse. Most prone are the domestic helpers and those in the entertainment trade,'' said Loretta Ann Rosales, a legislator.

According to a 1998 survey submitted by the US Congress, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait ''stand out as the places where overseas Filipinas suffered most human rights abuses,'' Rosales said.

Yet addressing these abuses is not always easy for labour-exporting countries like the Philippines, especially without an international instrument that will compel host countries to acknowledge migrant workers' rights and treat them humanely.

Ten countries, including the Philippines, have signed the UN Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Ten more signatories are needed to enforce it, but many host countries have not signed it.

''If the Sabah incident demonstrates anything, it is the complete vulnerability of our nationals abroad and our powerlessness to do anything when they are treated mercilessly, or as in this case, terrorised absolutely,'' said De Quiros.

The Philippines does have bilateral agreements with many nations. But ''the government must strengthen relations with host countries, not grovel before them,'' argued De Quiros. ''After all, our countries derive mutual benefit from the overseas Filipino workers.'' IPS