Woman jailed for dumping baby in Garuda plane

Woman jailed for dumping baby in Garuda plane

JAKARTA (JP): A migrant worker was sentenced to 10 months
imprisonment on Monday for abandoning her newly born baby in the
toilet of a Garuda Indonesia aircraft which brought her home from
Saudi Arabia.

"The defendant was found guilty of committing a crime and
inhuman deed by abandoning the newly born baby in the locker of
the toilet...," presiding judge Agus Budiarto of the Tangerang
District Court said.

Defendant Imas broke into tears upon hearing the verdict and
said she would consider whether or not to appeal.

The sentence was lower than the one requested by prosecutor
Nelita Aryani, who earlier asked the court to jail the 28 year
old woman for 18 months.

Imas, 27, left for Saudi Arabia in March 1999 after signing a
two-year contract to work as a housemaid. In the new country,
however, the native of Cianjur, West Java, was raped. She was
sent home after the employer found out about her pregnancy.

The baby was born onboard Garuda Indonesia with flight number
GA 983, on Nov. 1, 2000.

About an hour before the plane landed at Soekarno Hatta
International Airport in Tangerang, the woman went to the toilet
as she wanted to urinate. It turned out, however, that she
delivered a baby girl. At first, Imas, a mother of two children,
was really surprised because she did not feel like delivering the
baby. But then, hit by panic, she tried to hide the baby, who was
born alive. She wrapped her in toilet paper and put her in the
locker, according to the court.

After cleaning herself, the woman returned to her seat. No one
was suspicious as she acted as if nothing serious happened to
her.

Soon after the aircraft landed, the baby was found by a member
of the cleaning service staff. The case was reported to the
police, who immediately checked all of the female migrant workers
who had just got off the plane. Imas admitted that it was her
baby.

The three-member panel of judges cited the mitigating facts:
that the defendant admitted to the abandonment, that she was a
rape victim and she has a husband and two children.

However, the judges underlined that abandoning the baby was
inhuman and that she must be punished for the crime.

Her defense lawyers, from Women's Solidarity and from the
Legal Aid Institute of the Women's Association for Justice (LBH
APIK), criticized the judges for not considering the
psychological impact of the case on their client.

"The judges failed to see the case in the context of the
problems of her life and her background. She was a victim of
sexual violence," lawyer Salma Safitri said.

The lawyers said that law enforcers should see violence
against women from the perspective of survivors so that women
could obtain justice.

Imas, an elementary school drop out, received legal aid only
five days before the trial began, after the defense team learned
about the case from newspapers.

Imas is now being detained at the Tangerang correctional
institute for women, while her baby is under the care of an
airport employee who has been married for seven years but had
hitherto remained childless.

"He (the employee) fell in love when he saw the baby. His wife
also shared the same feelings and they are now in the middle of
processing the papers to adopt the baby," said Safitri.

Imas and her husband gave away the child happily, the lawyer
said. (41/sim)