Migrante International said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is being “heartless” for ignoring pleas for clemency for Mary Jane Veloso even after receiving thousands of petitions since 2024.
Migrante said Marcos has the power to free the jailed migrant worker or even visit her at the Women’s Correctional Institution in Mandaluyong to hear her out personally.
“It is he who should have the compassion to meet her in prison. We challenge Marcos to visit Mary Jane and hear her story,” Migrante said in a statement.
“The Marcos regime should stop with its cold-hearted excuses and delays. BBM should grant Veloso the justice that she deserves,” the group added.
Migrante and Veloso’s parents led a rally at the Department of Justice in Manila on Monday, asking for her freedom 16 years in both Indonesian and Philippine prisons.
Fourteen months after the Indonesian government repatriated the human trafficking victim from Wirogunan prison in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to Manila, Veloso remains in jail awaiting release orders from Marcos.
Celia Veloso said the Philippine president has the power to pardon her daughter to allow her to walk free.
Convicted by an Indonesian court of smuggling illegal narcotics in 2010, Veloso had consistently argued she was used as an innocent drug mule by her recruiters.
She was initially sentenced to death but was eventually repatriated to the Philippines by Indonesian president Probowo Subianto’s government in late 2024.
The Philippines however does not have a death penalty policy, commuting Veloso’s sentence to life imprisonment.
Migrante pointed out that Philippine courts have already convicted her recruiters of human trafficking, proving her story of being made a drug mule.
Veloso’s lawyer, Edwin dela Cruz of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers, argued that Veloso’s continued detention is illegal as she has no pending case in any local court. # (Raymund B.Villanueva)
