APRIL 28 (Reuters) — Dozens from Hong Kong’s migrant workers community, mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia, joined the global plea on Monday (April 27) to spare the life of a Filipina who is due to be executed in Indonesia for trafficking heroin.
About 50 protesters shouted that the mother-of-two, Mary Jane Veloso, is “a victim not a criminal” and “stop the execution”, outside of the city’s Indonesian Consulate.
Indonesia this weekend informed the group of drug-crime convicts, which includes nationals from Brazil, Nigeria, and Australia, that they would be executed in a matter of days, possibly as soon as Tuesday.
The demonstrators, lighting candles and wearing red headbands, are convinced that 30-year-old Veloso was duped into carrying a suitcase lined with 2.6 kilograms of heroin.
Protest organizer and Secretary General of United Filipinos in Hong Kong, Eman Villanueva, said he believes Veloso is innocent.
“Information are coming out, that she was actually tricked into bringing the drugs. She is not aware that there is this heroin inside the lining of her luggage. The luggage was actually not hers, it was given to her. And I think Mary Jane (Veloso) was not even a drug user. She doesn’t have any record. She doesn’t have the means and the resources to actually bring in all these drugs. She doesn’t even have the contacts. She is a very innocent person,” Villanueva said.
One protester, Evangeline Vance, said it would be unfair to execute Veloso.
“For me, that is very unfair. Because she doesn’t have any idea about the heroin inside the luggage,” Vance said.
Philippines President Benigno Aquino had appealed to Indonesian President Joko Widodo at a summit of Southeast Asian nations to spare Veloso.
Widodo said he was sympathetic and would consider the plea, but later Indonesia’s Attorney General said there would be no clemency for Mary Jane Veloso.
Critics of Aquino, including Villanueva, said the president had done little to stop the executions of Filipinos abroad.
Since Aquino took power in 2010, seven Filipinos have been executed, according to local network in the Philippines.
Currently 77 Filipinos are on death row, including 27 in Saudi Arabia, it added, quoting a Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson.
Villanueva said the president had not done enough to stop the execution.
“We have no other person to be held accountable but the Philippine president. This president has already sacrificed not only one but several lives of migrant, overseas Filipino workers. Mary Jane (Veloso) would be if not the eighth would be the ninth overseas Filipino to be executed under this present administration,” Villanueva said.
Apart from Veloso, eight other drug traffickers were also informed they would face the firing squad as early as Tuesday. They included two Australians, four Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian.
Indonesia has harsh punishments for drug crimes and resumed executions in 2013 after a five-year gap.
Hong Kong has about 330,000 foreign domestic helpers, most of them from the Philippines and Indonesia and nearly all women, who can earn more in Hong Kong to send back to their families than they can at home.
