Supporters of death row prisoner Mary Jane Veloso have gathered in Manila to protest against her impending execution in Indonesia, following reports that the Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte had given the go-ahead for the penalty.
Veloso, who was arrested in April 2010 and sentenced to death six months later, was granted a temporary reprieve in April last year despite the state-sanctioned killings of seven other death row inmates including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
Before Duterte assumed office at the end of June, the Philippine government had twice intervened to try to save the life of the domestic worker and mother of two, with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) under the previous President Benigno Aquino III piecing together a detailed timeline of events that pinpointed Veloso's work recruiters as the real culprits.
Human rights and migrant worker organisations in both the Philippines and Indonesia have engaged in social media campaigns and widespread public rallies on behalf of Veloso, who throughout her trial has maintained that she was initially recruited to Malaysia to clean houses, after which her recruiter Maria Cristina Sergio requested her to travel to Yogyakarta, Indonesia.
Veloso, who hails from the impoverished Cabanatuan city in Central Luzon of the Philippines, said Sergio had bought her new clothes for trip and equipped her with a larger bag, which Veloso only upon her arrest discovered had heroin sewn into the lining, according to the DFA account.
