EDITORIAL — Coming home

Fourteen years after being arrested and imprisoned in a foreign land for drug trafficking, Mary Jane Veloso will finally be able to celebrate Christmas again with her family in the Philippines.

Veloso, convicted and sentenced to death in Indonesia for bringing into that country 2.6 kilos of heroin, is scheduled to return to Manila from Jakarta on Dec. 18. She will continue serving her prison term at the Correctional Institution for Women while the Marcos administration ponders clemency in her case.

Throughout her ordeal, Veloso has not wavered in maintaining her innocence. Her story highlights the travails that drive millions of Filipinos to leave their families and try their luck abroad in hopes of giving their loved ones a better life.

Born to extreme poverty, Veloso dropped out of first year high school, got married at 17 and had two sons before she separated from her husband. Needing to provide for her children, she went to Dubai in 2009 to work as a household helper, but cut short her two-year contract and returned to the Philippines reportedly after her employer tried to rape her.

In April 2010, she was recruited by Maria Kristina Sergio to work as a household helper in Malaysia. Veloso paid Sergio P20,000 in cash along with a motorcycle and a cell phone as recruitment fee. Veloso’s story from that point has not changed. On arrival in Kuala Lumpur, Sergio told Veloso that the job was no longer available, but there was an opening in Indonesia. Sergio took her shopping for additional clothing and a new suitcase.

Veloso was introduced by Sergio to a Malaysia-based African man known as “Ike” who gave her the plane ticket to Indonesia along with a cell phone number to call upon her arrival there on April 25, 2010.

At the airport in Yogyakarta, airport customs personnel found the heroin wrapped in aluminum foil and black plastic, concealed in the lining of the new suitcase.

In January 2020, Sergio and a cohort, Julius Lacanilao, were sentenced to life in prison by a regional trial court in Nueva Ecija on separate charges of large-scale illegal recruitment filed by three other complainants. The two were also ordered by RTC Judge Anarica Castillo-Reyes to pay a fine of P2 million.

Sergio had surfaced amid what she described as threats to her life. An appeal to allow Veloso to testify against Sergio and prove that Veloso was a victim of human trafficking helped in the appeal for Indonesia to spare her life. Veloso will be coming home tomorrow, but the circumstances that drove her into the arms of human traffickers and drug dealers are still around. Unless these circumstances are sufficiently addressed, there will be more Filipinos like her who may face possible execution in their search for a better life.