President Benigno Aquino sent Vice President Jejomar Binay to make a last-minute plea to Beijing last month and won a stay of execution for the two Filipino women and one man. The Chinese gesture raised hopes in the Philippines that the three, who have denied being drug traffickers, could be saved from lethal injection.
The Philippines has abolished the death penalty and the plight of Filipinos on death row abroad is an emotional and political issue.
Chinese Ambassador Liu Jianchao told a news conference that a commutation of the death sentences “has been ruled out,” adding that the verdict of China’s Supreme People’s Court was final and could be enforced “sooner or later.” Aquino has already written to Chinese President Hu Jintao appealing for clemency. He told reporters the issue will test China’s promise of building closer ties.
China, however, said the matter involved criminal cases and was not related to the countries’ relations.
“I don’t want our wonderful relations to be kidnapped by these drug criminals,” Liu said, adding that the three Filipinos “at the moment are still alive.” Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario appeared resigned to the fate of the three. “I don’t know what other initiatives we can undertake,” del Rosario said, without ruling out a final appeal.
Peter Ordinario, the father of one of the convicts, begged the Chinese government to give Filipino investigators more time to prove his daughter is innocent. He said he suspected a drug trafficking syndicate fooled his daughter into carrying a bag she did not know contained heroin into China, where she was promised work as a cell phone saleswoman.
“She shouldn’t be made to pay for that with her life,” Ordinario told The Associated Press. “All she wanted in China was a job to support her two children.” Problems faced by Filipino workers overseas — including abuse by employers and lack of legal protections — are a sensitive issue in the Philippines, which has some 10 percent of its 94 million people toiling abroad to escape widespread poverty and unemployment at home.
Amid intense local media coverage of the three Filipinos’ impending execution last month, a migrant workers’ group demanded the dismissal of the Philippine foreign secretary and other diplomats for allegedly failing to protect Filipinos abroad.
In many cases, the government has succeeded in saving the lives of Filipino workers sentenced to death on drug and murder charges in Asia and the Middle East.
A territorial flap erupted earlier this month when the government protested to China after a Philippine ship searching for oil complained it was harassed by two Chinese patrol boats at Reed Bank near the Spratly Islands, which are claimed by China, the Philippines and four other countries or territories.
