RI maids on death row in Singapore
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The government has pledged to make maximum efforts to provide legal protection for five Indonesian migrant workers who may face death sentence in Singapore.
Minister of Manpower and Transmigration Jacob Nuwa Wea said that he had been coordinating with the foreign ministry to lobby the Singaporean authorities and to hire professional lawyers in Singapore to represent the uneducated workers.
"We are coordinating with home minister Hassan Wirayuda to lobby his Singaporean counterpart and other relevant officials to help them understand the troubles the five workers are facing," he said after delivering a speech in a seminar organized by the Atmajaya Catholic University in Yogyakarta on Wednesday.
Nuwa Wea said that according to an official report he received from the Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore Mochamad Slamet Hidayat on Tuesday, the five workers, all female and employed as domestic helpers, are facing murder charges, which according to the Singapore law, carry the maximum penalty of death.
The five women are Sundarti Supriyanto, Purwanti Pandji, Sumiyati, Juminem and Siti Aminah. Sundarti, Purwanti, Juminem and Aminah were charged with murdering their employers while Sumiyati was charged with manslaughter for negligence that caused the death of her employer's child.
The minister said he did not know why the four migrant workers killed their employers but according to the ambassador's report, prosecutors have laid murder charges mostly because the workers could not communicate in English with the police and the court and could therefore not defend themselves adequately.
"With intensive lobbying with the relevant authorities in Singapore and the engagement of qualified lawyers, we hope the five workers will be acquitted of the murder charges, or given lighter penalties," he said.
Many Indonesian workers have been killed or tortured in Middle East while resisting rape attempts by their employers.
Mulyadi, a lawyer of the Legal Aid for Migrant Workers Institute (Kopbumi), which has helped handle Sundarti's case, said Sundarti killed her employer in a clash in June 2002 after enduring repeated acts of violence by her employer, a woman.
He said that Sundarti had stood trial three times and the court verdict was expected to be issued this year.
Chalief Akbar, the press and cultural attache of the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore, said that the embassy had accompanied the workers when they were undergoing police interrogation and when they stood trial in court.
Currently, the number of Indonesian workers registered with the embassy has reached 28,000 and there are around 20,000 other workers who are not registered, making it difficult for the embassy to monitor them.
"We want them to have maximum representation by lawyers to have the death sentence overturned or to get as light a sentence as possible," he said, while concurring with the minister's statement that they were charged with the maximum sentence of death due to their inability to speak English.
Chalief said further that the embassy had spoken to the Singapore manpower ministry to help improve relations between Singaporean employees and their Indonesian domestic helpers.
"Singaporean people should not recruit workers who are unskilled and unable to speak English or Mandarin to help avoid problems during their employment," he said.
He said he had also lobbied the Singapore government to create an occupational safety program to prevent accidents among Indonesian workers.
"As many as 97 Indonesian workers have died in work-related accidents between 1999 and 2004 and most incidents happened because of a lack of safety equipment." Many domestic helpers have fallen to their death while cleaning windows in high-rise apartments.