Maid gets life for killing boss
Agencies, Singapore/Jakarta
A 24-year-old Indonesian maid, set to hang in Singapore on charges of stabbing dead her employer, won a reprieve on Friday when a court reduced her sentence to life in prison because she had been abused.
Sundarti Suprianto was charged with stabbing and burning Angie Ng, 33, and her 3-year-old daughter Crystal Poh, in May 2002, and then covering up the murders by setting fire to the crime scene -- her employer's office.
The Singapore High Court found Sundarti guilty on the lesser charge of culpable homicide instead of the original charge of murder, which carries a mandatory death sentence by hanging under Singapore's tough laws.
Sundarti's lawyers said she was provoked after suffering abuse and deserved compassion because she saved Ng's 2-year-old son, Leon Poh, from the fire.
"The defense of grave and sudden provocation succeeded," Johan Ismail, who represented Sundarti, was quoted by Reuters as saying. "She saved the young child, so the feeling was she was not a cold-blooded murderer."
Sundarti had been employed for only about two weeks.
While Justice MPH Rubin found Sundarti guilty of committing the crimes, he convicted her on the lesser charge of culpable homicide after taking into account the "ill-treatment" Ng had inflicted on her.
"This is an exceptionally tragic case. It is tragic and sad both for the deceased and the accused," Rubin said, as quoted by AFP, before sentencing her to life in jail.
Rubin rejected the prosecution's argument that Sundarti was a "cold-blooded killer" who carried out a "mindless killing".
"Despite all the lies uttered by the accused to extricate herself from her guilt, there was cogent evidence to conclude that the deceased subjected her to some measure of ill- treatment," Rubin said.
"In my view, the cord of reason suddenly snapped when the accused could no longer control her feelings of despair."
Rubin referred to Ng depriving Sundarti of food, forcing the Indonesian woman to accept biscuits from other people out of pity, as one form of ill-treatment.
Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore Mohamad Slamet Hidayat said he respected the sentence.
"In our view, the court has been fair in proceeding the case, and thus, we respect the outcome," he told The Jakarta Post.
The ambassador hopes Sundarti's case will help other domestic workers from Indonesia prepare themselves mentally and physically before deciding to work in Singapore.
Often regarded as an inexhaustible underclass who are cheap and compliant, Singapore's 140,000 foreign domestic workers make the affluent Southeast Asian city-state one of the world's top employers of maids.
About one in seven families hire live-in maids, mostly drawn from the Philippines, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.
After high-profile reports of maid abuse, prospective employers must now attend a seminar on how to treat staff properly and also pass a test.
Domestic workers are one of the few groups of people in tightly controlled Singapore that are not protected by the Employment Act that sets basic work rights.
However, the Singapore government announced in July it would change some rules in an effort to end the tension between domestic workers and their employers, such as raising the minimum age of foreign employees from 18 to 23. Related Story on Page 5