Mary Jane Veloso is embraced by her two sons Wednesday as she arrives at a Manila correctional facility where she is due to continue serving her sentence for a drug smuggling conviction of which she has always protested her innocence. Photo by Francis R. Malasig/EPA-EFE
A woman flew home to the Philippines on Wednesday after spending 14 years in an Indonesian prison, during which she came within hours of going before a firing squad after being convicted of smuggling 5.7 pounds of heroin.
However, while 39-year-old mother of two Mary Jane Veloso was allowed to briefly reunite with her family and loved ones in Manila she later reported to the country’s main women’s prison in the capital to continue serving her sentence in line with the terms of deal negotiated by the two governments. Advertisement
“This is a new life for me and I will have a new beginning in the Philippines,” she told a news conference.
“I have to go home because I have a family there, I have my children waiting for me,” saying it was her hope that she would get to spend Christmas with them.
“I am humbly asking the [Philippine] president to grant me clemency.”
Crowds of supporters and well-wishers gathered to give Veloso a hero’s welcome home to a country that has taken her cause to its heart, in part because it plays to the darkest fears of the millions of families with no choice but to allow their loved to head overseas in search of a living. Advertisement
She was also the recipient of an outpouring of support on social media platforms.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has the legal authority to commute her sentence if he so chooses.
Veloso has protested her innocence throughout saying she was duped into carrying the drugs when she flew to Jakarta in 2010 to take up a new job as a domestic helper. She claimed relatives of the daughter of one of her godparents gave her a new suitcase as a gift which, completely unknown to her, had heroin sewn into the lining.
In 2015, she came perilously close to being executed by firing squad before then-President Benigno Aquino II intervened directly, managing to persuade his Indonesian counterpart Joko Wikodo to agree to an 11th-hour reprieve on the grounds that a woman had been arrested and put on trial for trafficking Veloso to Indonesia.
The stay of execution was granted so close to the deadline that some newspapers in the Philippines ran the story on their front pages that Veloso had been executed, according to the BBC.
“She is now a living hero to countless other migrants in the greater fight to end human trafficking,” said Joanna Concepcion, chairperson of Migrante International, a global alliance of grassroots Filipino organizations that campaigns on migrant rights and welfare issues. Advertisement
Activists said Veloso’s story highlighted that much more needed to be done to keep migrant workers safe.
“She is a victim from a poor country that has turned labor exportation into an industry. That’s why she went abroad — to look for a means of livelihood,” said Lisa Maza, a former Philippine lawmaker who authored the country’s landmark 2003 Anti-Trafficking in Person Act.
