By ALYSSA MAE CLARIN
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — The family and supporters of a Filipino on death row in Indonesia are calling on the Philippine government to grant her clemency over earlier pronouncements that she will be allowed to return to the country.
“We hope that our government will put Mary Jane in a safe place, and that she will be granted clemency by our government,” said Celia Veloso, Mary Jane’s mother, during the program commemorating the birth of Andres Bonifacio last November 30 (Saturday).
According to Indonesia’s senior minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra, the country plans to return most of its foreign prisoners back to their home countries before the year ends. Among them is Veloso who has been on death row for 14 years.
The Indonesian government is targeting the end of December to finish the prison transfers.
“We are transferring them to their countries so they can serve their sentence there, but if the countries want to give amnesty, we respect it. It’s their right,” Mahendra said in report from Agence France-Presse.
Although the return to the Philippines is a welcome development, Veloso’s clemency remains unsure. Her parents remain hopeful that the Philippine government will listen to their request for their daughter to be granted full and immediate clemency as soon as she is transferred back to the country.
A victim of the country’s economic crisis
Veloso was forced to become a migrant worker to support her family when the daily minimum wage in her home province of Nueva Ecija was at PHP316 (USD 5.39). Despite her bad experience as a migrant worker in Dubai, Veloso decided to work overseas again after realizing that her wage was not enough to support her two children’s education.
“The daily minimum wage in her province is now PHP480 (USD 8.19), [not even] half of the PHP1,200 (USD 20.47) it takes for a Filipino family to survive today,” Migrante said in a November 30 statement. “We cannot continue to let wages back home remain stagnant and work opportunities scarce if we do not want our society to birth more victims of human trafficking and forced migration like Mary Jane.”
Migrante International and church-based Task Force Save Mary Jane launched a petition urging President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to grant clemency to Veloso.
The signature campaign is supported by the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), the organization of Veloso’s private lawyers.
Task Force Save Mary Jane seeks to ensure the safe return of Veloso back home to the Philippines and to “demonstrate compassion by granting her immediate clemency, based on humanitarian grounds” and recognize that Veloso is a victim of human trafficking.
The task force also aims to ensure that Veloso’s testimony against her traffickers will be taken and acknowledged as part of holding the perpetrators accountable for their crimes.
Read: SC allows Mary Jane Veloso to testify against recruiters
“Mary Jane is among many women migrant workers, from impoverished backgrounds, who have been preyed upon by illegal recruiters and human traffickers,” the petition said. “The pending return of Mary Jane Veloso to her homeland will shine as a beacon of hope for migrant workers around the world, especially for those who feel abandoned and neglected and who face unjust detention, the harsh realities of exploitation, and injustice.” (RTS, JJE, DAA)
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