A high-profile Kuwaiti blogger has sparked outrage for comments she made about the rights of Filipino domestic workers.
In an Instagram video which has since been deleted, social media influencer Sondos al-Qattan vented her anger over Kuwaiti government law reforms which gave Filipino domestic workers one day off a week and allowed them to keep their passports.
The social media celebrity, who has more than 2.3 million followers on Instagram, called the reforms “pathetic”.
“If they ran away and went back to their country, who will refund me?” Ms al-Qattan was recorded saying.
"How can you have a servant in your house who gets to keep their passport with them? And what's worse is they have one day off every week. I don’t want a Filipina maid anymore.”
The reaction from social media was swift and damning. So too was the response from several beauty companies including Max Factor who had had ties with the Instagram influencer.
"Max Factor Arabia was shocked by the comments made … regarding the new labour law in Kuwait," a spokesperson told Al Jazeera.
"Max Factor Arabia is taking this incident very seriously and have immediately suspended all collaborations with Sondos."
Perfume brand, M. Micallef also opposed the blogger's comments, telling the BBC, "We are totally against the principles expressed by Ms Sondos al-Qattan which in no way reflect the Micallef brand."
The advocacy body for Filipinos working overseas, Migrante International, demanded an apology from Ms al-Qatta for her "degrading" remarks which it likened to those of a "slave-owner".
"Sondos should have known by now that workers have rights too and they deserve just and humane treatment from their employers," it said in a statement.
"It would also be more valuable to her if she can visit the Philippines to witness for herself the appalling poverty that grips many Filipino families and find out what hardships OFWs [Overseas Filipinos] had to go through in government agencies before they can finally be deployed abroad."
Social media users around the world condemned the blogger.
Despite the fierce backlash, Ms al-Qattan refused to apologise for her comments and on Tuesday posted a lengthy statement to her Instagram page in which she reiterated her view that "the passport of any expat employee should be in the possession of a employer to protect the employers interest [sic]".
"I have not [in] any circumstances in present or past... degraded or in any way mistreated an employee of mine," she wrote in her post.
"I consider all employees as equal human being [sic]."
Ms al-Qattan double-downed further on her comments in a subsequent phone interview with AFP, calling the response she had received "unjustified".
"All I said was that the employer was entitled to keep the servant's passport and that many Kuwaitis and Gulf nationals agree with me," she said.
"I have the right as a kafil (sponsor) to keep my employee's passport, and I am responsible for paying a deposit of up to 1,500 dinars (AUD $20,000)."
The blogger said the Kuwaiti laws prior to the reforms did not violate human rights as she did not "deprive the employee of her salary or beat her".
The Philippine President imposed a partial ban on Filipino workers migrating to Kuwait for work after the body of a murdered domestic servant was found in a freezer. President Rodrigo Duterte criticised the treatment of Filipino workers in the Gulf nation and asked Filipino maids who suffered abuse to come back home.
The ban was lifted in May after Kuwait and the Philippines signed an agreement on workers' rights.
Around 262,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, nearly 60 percent of them domestic workers, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.
