REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The Jakarta Legal Aid Institute (LBH) said the execution of a number of death row convicts and the conviction of Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso is contra productive in the government attempts to save Indonesians abroad.
"Mary Jane is a migrant worker, a house maid, like 264 Indonesians facing death sentence in a number of other countries," LBH public lawyer Eny Rofiatul said in a statement here on Thursday.
Seven drug convicts were executed on the notorious Nusakambangan island prison earlier this week.
Mary Jane one of eight to face firing squad that night escaped execution in the last minutes after the Philippines government said it has evidence that Mary Jane was a victim of human trafficking.
Eny said Mary Jane could not be charged with crime if it was true that she was a victim of human trafficking, which is not rare befalling migrant workers.
It is regulated in chapter 18 of the Law No. 21 of 2007 on human trafficking criminal act, she said.
"Regardless of the country of origin, migrant workers are always surrounded by structural condition of poverty," she added.
LBH urged the government to seriously address the case of Mary Jane.
"As an institution adopting human rights principles, the Jakarta LBH sees that anyone's right to live could not be violated by anyone including the state," its director Febi Yonesta said.
The institution, therefore, strongly asked President Joko Widodo to make sure that Mary Jane is given any legal aid needed to prove that she is not guilty.
"The fact at court sessions showed that she had always been consistent saying that she was ordered by someone and was not aware that there was drugs in her bag," Febi said.
He said LBH regretted police did not give sufficient legal aid for Mary Jane during her interrogations and she was not given a Tagalog interpreter including at court.
Legal aid and interpreter are regulated in the country's criminal law book, he said.
The injustice faced by Mary Jane was that she could not defend herself to a maximum that led to her death sentence which almost cost her life if the real criminal did not surrendered herself in the Philippines.
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