Mary Jane Veloso: ‘My return to life from death row’

The Filipino migrant sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug trafficking arrived in Manila after 14 years in prison. Today she was finally able to see her children. ‘Living behind bars has changed my life, transforming me into a person who has come closer to God’. There have been many requests from the Church and civil society for President Marcos to grant her a pardon, which the Jakarta government will not oppose.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) - ‘A miracle that came when I had lost all hope’. With these words commented the extradition that snatched her from death row, Mary Jane Veloso, the 39-year-old Filipino migrant arrested in 2010 in Indonesia for drug dealing and sentenced to death. After 14 years of detention, she returned to her home country last night under an agreement between the Manila and Jakarta governments announced in recent weeks. Transferred to the Correctional Institution for Women (CIW) in Mandaluyong City, near Manila, today she was able to meet her parents, Cesar and Celia, and her sons, Mark Daniel and Mark Darren.

Born in Cabanatuan, a city in the province of Nueva Ecija, Veloso was the youngest of five siblings in a family living in extreme poverty. Her father worked as a seasonal farm labourer on a sugar cane plantation and her mother collected discarded bottles and plastic to sell to junk dealers. At the age of 16, Mary Jane dropped out of school to marry her husband. The couple later separated, finding themselves the single mother of two young children. To support them in 2009, she entrusted them to her grandparents and emigrated to Dubai to work as a waitress. But an attempted rape by her employer forced her to return home.

A year later, Veloso was then recruited to work as a maid in Malaysia, only to be transferred to Indonesia by her employer. But on arrival in Jakarta she was caught with 2.6 kilograms of heroin and charged with drug dealing, an offence for which Indonesia has the death penalty. Despite the fact that Mary Jane always maintained that she had been deceived by her recruiters and had transported the illegal substances without her knowledge, she was nevertheless convicted in 2015. And since then her ordeal and attempts at intervention by the Philippine government began.

The years on death row, however, were also the time of a journey of faith, which began with a Jesuit priest from Yogyakarta, Fr Bernard ‘Teddy’ Kieser, who often visited Veloso in the detention centre where she was imprisoned. ‘Before, I was not a good Catholic,’ Mary Jane said, ‘but living behind bars has changed my life, transforming me into a person who has come closer to God. I am ready to build a new life, like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon’. ‘For almost 15 years I was separated from my children and my parents, I could not see them grow up,’ she added. ’Now I want to have the opportunity to take care of them and be close to my parents.

Commenting on the news, Bishop Ruperto Cruz Santos, Bishop of Antipolo and chairman of the Philippine Episcopal Commission for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, called Mary Jane's return home ‘a triumph of faith, justice and the constant support of our community’.Bishop Santos added that Veloso now needs ‘mercy and justice’. Numerous voices from the Church, civil society and other human rights organisations are appealing to Philippine President Marcos to now pardon this woman.

For his part, the Indonesian Minister for Justice, Human Rights and Immigration, Yusril Ihza Mahendra, praised the transfer agreement, calling it a ‘milestone’ between Indonesia and the Philippines and part of the ‘good neighbourhood’ policy of the new administration of President Prabowo Subianto. Once repatriated, Mahendra added, whether the Philippines would like to pardon Veloso ‘is entirely up to them and we must also respect that’.

The last death sentences in Indonesia were carried out in July 2016, when an Indonesian and three foreigners were shot. According to government figures, there are about 530 people on death row in the country, mostly for drug-related crimes, including 96 foreigners.

(contributed by Santosh Digal)