MANILA, Philippines – Thirty-five Filipinos are currently on death row abroad and Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. wants to look into how the government is addressing their plight.
Villar filed Resolution No. 421 urging the Senate committee on labor to inquire into the status of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) on death row, citing the need to ensure that all remedies are exhausted to help them.
Latest statistics indicate that there are 35 OFWs facing cases with capital punishment as penalty, including one in Brunei, two in China, one in the United States, four in Kuwait, nine in Saudi Arabia and 10 in Malaysia.
Villar said the Magna Carta for Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos or Republic Act No. 8042, the Labor Code of the Philippines, treaties on international labor and human rights conventions of which the Philippines is a signatory, and the guarantees of the 1987 Constitution on labor, were clear that the government must extend full assistance to distressed OFWs.
The assistance includes legal, social, economic, and other pertinent help, he said.
In his resolution, Villar cited a number of OFW cases that should be looked into. The separate cases of Idan Tejano and Marjana Sakilan are being heard in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with the public aspect tried in the Jeddah Grand Court and the private aspect on suspended sentence as promulgated by the Supreme Judicial Cases.
They are in similar legal stages.
May Vecina is currently detained in Kuwait and is being litigated; Rodelio Lanuza’s case is also being tried and is pending before the Dammam Grand Court.
Rolando Gonzales, Edison Gonzales and Eduardo Arcilla are all part of the mass arrest of 72 Filipino workers in April 2006 in Saudi Arabia.
The Tameez Court in the Kingdom, an appellate court, is reviewing their cases.
Framed
Migrante International raised the alarm over the fate of the Gonzales brothers and Arcilla who, it said, had been tried and sentenced without any lawyer.
“The three, all from Mexico, Pampanga were sentenced to death on July 23, 2007 after they allegedly confessed to Saudi police that they killed three other overseas Filipino workers in Jeddah on April 2006,” said Migrante International chairperson Connie Bragas-Regalado.
She said the three were not provided lawyers, and “there was no representation from the Philippine embassy during the first hearing and sentencing on May 14 and July 23, 2007, respectively.”
The three convicts insisted they were merely framed and had confessed to the crime because they were tortured, she added.
According to Migrante, Arcilla claimed he was blindfolded up to seven days while enduring heavy beatings. Rolando claimed he was electrocuted while blindfolded, while brother Edison said his feet, back and hands were repeatedly hit.
Nelson Diana’s case, on the other hand, is being heard by the Malaysian High Court.
“An immediate inquiry into the status of our OFWs on death row, including assistance provided and the short- and long-term policies of the country, must be made in order to most suitably and adequately address the issue,” he said.
Over eight million Filipinos currently work and live in at least 197 countries and territories, making the Philippines the top labor exporting country in the world, following China and India in 2005.
Five OFWs have already been executed in the Middle East under the Arroyo government. Antonio Alvesa, Sergio Aldana, Miguel Fernandez and Wilfredo Bautista were executed in 2005 in Taif and Reynaldo Cortez on June 13, 2007 in Saudi Arabia.
As part of the effort to save the lives of these three OFWs and raise awareness about the dire situation of all OFW on death row, Migrante announced it will step up its campaign to pressure the government to act immediately. – With Ding Cervantes, Mayen Jaymalin