Flor Contempacion
A Filipina maid, 42 year old Flor Contemplacion, was convicted
by a Singapore court of killing another Filipina maid, Delia
Maga and the three year old Singaporean son of her
employer on May 4th
1991.
Mrs. Contemplacion said, on the eve of her execution,
that she was ready to
die after final pleas for clemency and a new trial
had been rejected.
The Philippine Foreign Secretary said that Flor Contemplacion
had thanked
Filipinos for their efforts in trying to save her,
but had said that if the
stay of execution will only delay the carrying out
of her sentence, she
preferred to have an early end to everyone's suffering
instead.
Flor was visited in Changi prison daily by her children,
a 21-year-old son,
a 17-year-old daughter and 15-year-old twin boys
who had last seen their
mother in 1989, but her husband Efren didn't visit
her because, "I could
not bear to see her and not be able to touch her
or embrace her after seven
years," he said.
He had made an emotional appeal a week earlier for
help in saving his wife.
She was informed of the date and the time of the
execution on Tuesday 14th
March as is customary in Singapore and apparently
took the news calmly.
"She was resigned to her fate and she tried to be
strong and told the
children to be strong and love one another".
"During her imprisonment Flor Contemplacion had nine
visits by Philippine
embassy officials. The government did not receive
any representations
regarding complaints of ill treatment or claims to
Contemplacion's
innocence," the ministry said.
"Are we to believe that if Flor Contemplacion felt
that she was innocent
she would chose to say so only to a prostitute in
prison," it added.
According to the Home Ministry, Parumog had been
arrested in Singapore on
June 25th 1992, and had signed a statement saying
that she had come to the
island republic for prostitution and "was charging
Singaporeans $100 ($70)
per sexual entertainment."
She was hanged before dawn on Friday 17th March 1995
together with three
male drug traffickers amidst scenes of unusually
tight security. Eight
policemen, including two armed with machine guns
and wearing flak jackets,
stood outside the prison gates with two dogs.
After the execution.
Flor Contemplacion's body was released and flow back
to Manila and was
greeted by the President's wife, Amelita, at the
airport. Perhaps
extraordinarily for a country that is actively trying
to restore the death
penalty itself, President Ramos and the Philippine
people saw Contemplacion
as a heroine.