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.