Sundarti not guilty, says family

Sundarti not guilty, says family

ID Nugroho, The Jakarta Post, Magetan

Sujinah, 60, kept quiet in her wheelchair when The Jakarta Post
visited her house in Mangge, Magetan, in East Java. Her eyes were
empty.

"I don't know what to say," she said, breaking the silence.

The frail woman's grand-daughter, Sundarti, 24, has been found
guilty in Singapore for killing both her female employer and the
employer's daughter earlier this year.

Despite Sundarti consistently denying the offense, the
Singapore Supreme Court found her guilty on Friday and sentenced
her to life in jail.

However, Sundarti's family in Magetan still don't believe that
Sundarti, a graduate of junior high school, killed her two
employers. "If she committed the murders, she must have had a
very good reason for it," said Suparto, 67, Sundarti's
grandfather, who said he knew Sundarti well.

Sundarti's family in Megetan is poor. Minus her father, who
died in 2001, The family lives together in an 8 by 10 meter house
made from wood and bamboo.

The house is inhabited by Suparto, Sujinah, Sundarti's mother,
Binarti, and her younger sister, Selvi Prihatin.

Sundarti was the second person in the family after her father,
that they could count on for extra income.

The family's poverty pushed Sundarti to find a good job to
help meet the family's needs. In 1999, she decided to work in
Singapore.

Her work in the island state for the next two years helped
finance her sister's schooling until senior high school. After
the death of her father in 2001, she returned to Singapore in
2002.

Nothing happened until last year, when the family heard a
newspaper report that Sundarti was being prosecuted for killing
her employers. Sundarti's mother, Binarti, went to Singapore to
check whether the report was credible. Her trip was financed by
the Indonesian Embassy in Singapore.

The report was later confirmed but Binarti failed to meet
Sundarti in Singapore, although she did not say why.

Binarti returned to Indonesia and the family waited with
apprehension for a year, knowing Sundarti was charged with
murder, with a maximum death sentence. Earlier, the prosecutor
called for the court to sentence her to death.

The family was relieved after Sundarti was "merely" sentenced
to life.

Commenting on the trial, Sri Wahyuningsih, an activist with
the Women's Crisis Center, said Sundari's case was a blatant
example of how the government had failed to fight for the
interests of Indonesian workers overseas. "The government did not
put pressure on the court to shed light on the cause of murder,
or whether the murder was actually committed by Sundarti," she
said on Thursday. The government was also negligent in other
cases, she said.