Once a Jolly Hangman (19 page)

In early May 2004 the Indonesian Minister for Women's Empowerment and the Minister of Manpower and Transmigration went to visit the five accused in Changi Prison. 'Unfortunately', wrote the Indonesian campaigner and anti-death penalty activist, Wahyu Susilo of Migrant Care, 'the Singapore government refused

them permission to visit these distressed young women facing the death penalty'. This further angered the activists and government officials and they vowed they would never be brushed off so easily by Singapore again. Migrant Care continued their campaign demanding that the Indonesian government should concentrate on legal efforts and political diplomacy to free these workers from the death penalty as a violation of human rights. 'From a human rights perspective, these five women must be freed from the threat of being hanged', they demanded. Wahyu Susilo added: 'If the Indonesian government does demand that Singapore remove the possibility of a death sentence for the five women, then it will also have to review the death penalty in our own criminal law system. More importantly, the government should immediately enact legislation to protect migrant workers. This legislation should concentrate on females working overseas, since this group is particularly vulnerable to violence'.

In the first murder trial, two Indonesian maids, one known only as Juminem, aged 18, and her close friend Siti Aminah, aged 15, were jointly charged with murder. The two had moved from East Java to Singapore and began working for Esther Ang and her ex-husband. Juminem was Ang's maid and Siti worked for her ex-husband in a separate but nearby household. The two maids were said to be very close and not to have had any other friends. Since their employers, although divorced, remained on good terms the pair also saw each other regularly. But relations between Juminem and Ang were not happy. On 2 March 2004 the two maids took turns to suffocate Ang with a pillow and beat her about the head and stomach with a wine bottle at her home. The pair then faked a break-in by taking her money and valuables. Juminem then forged her employer's signature on a cheque for $25,000 payable to Siti Aminah. It was revealed in court documents that Juminem planned to kill Ang about a week earlier because she was 'unreasonable and oppressive' and enlisted the help of Siti. Justice Choo Han Teck found that Juminem had been suffering from 'reactive depression' as a result of stress from loneliness, financial worry and her employer's demands. The defence had quoted extensively from her diary illustrating the way her mood had changed over the previous months. She was found guilty of culpable homicide not amounting to murder and sentenced to life imprisonment instead
of ending up on the scaffold. As for Siti Aminah, the court found that she had been under 'severe stress', especially from her employer's elderly mother who had called her names and pushed her around. She was only 15 and
of borderline intelligence. The judge said she was easily led by others, especially her best friend. She was sentenced to 10 years' jail.

Severe though those sentences were, everyone heaved a sigh of relief. Siti could not have been hanged anyway because of her age, but if that had been Juminem's fate the reaction in other parts of Asia would have been disastrous for both countries but especially Singapore. The demonstration outside the Singapore Embassy in Jakarta a few months earlier was warning enough. It reminded everyone - if such a reminder were needed - of the disastrous consequences with the Philippines when Flor Contemplacion was hanged. With relations between Indonesia and Singapore often on a knife-edge, an incident like hanging one of their maids - with some very savvy public relations-minded activists in the background - might plunge them into another costly row with all kinds of unpleasant ramifications of a business and economic nature. To many observers, as to be expected, the risk of a diplomatic row, an economic meltdown and a threatened ban on sending maids to Singapore may have impinged on the verdicts. The judgement offered little reprieve for the murdered woman's family, however. Her daughter told reporters that time had helped in the healing process but they have yet to obtain closure. After the case, Indonesian Ambassador to Singapore, Mochamad S. Hidayt, said he was relieved at the verdict and that his embassy was working with Singapore's Ministry of Manpower - the government department that issues work permits - to strengthen cooperation. The question of how a 15 year-old girl could obtain such a job in Singapore was also highlighted by the activists. 'It amounts to child trafficking and slave labour', said Anis Hidayah. 'She was just a child at the time. She should have been in school. Now she is in prison. For ten years!' Ambassador Hidayt commented: 'We will try to improve the quality of the domestic workers looking for employment in Singapore but at the same time we also appeal to employers in Singapore to treat our domestic workers humanely'.

The next maid to beat the noose was Sundarti Supriyanto, aged 23. She was charged with murdering her abusive employer, Angie Ng, 33,

and her three year-old daughter, Crystal, in May 2002. Sundarti faced two mandatory death sentences. The circumstances of the crimes were horrific. She was accused of stabbing Ng to death then setting the home alight with petrol. The little girl was burned to death. To many observers, it appeared to be yet another case of an unofficial moratorium being put on the death penalty where maids who murder their employees and members of their families were concerned. While Justice M.P.H. Rubin found Sundarti guilty, he convicted her on the lesser charge of culpable homicide or manslaughter after taking into account the 'ill-treatment' Ng had subjected her to. In fact, because the judiciary has no discretion in mandatory death sentence cases, the charges were reduced by the Attorney General even before the trial began. "This is an exceptionally tragic case. It is tragic and sad both for the deceased and the accused', Rubin said before sentencing her to life behind bars. He had rejected the prosecution's claim that Sundarti was a 'cold-blooded killer' who carried out a 'mindless killing'. 'Despite all the lies uttered by the accused to extricate herself from her guilt, there was cogent evidence to conclude that the deceased subjected her to some measure of ill-treatment. In my view the cord of reason suddenly snapped when the accused could no
longer control her emotions of feeling and despair'. The judge also referred to Ng depriving Sundarti of food, then forcing the starving woman to accept biscuits from other people who pretended to pity her. This amounted to physical and mental ill-treatment, the judge said.

In July 2005, a young Indonesian maid named only as Rohana appeared in the dock in the High Court charged with murdering her employer Tan Chiang Eng. She, too, was facing the death penalty. But she also managed to dodge the noose - as horrible as the nature of the killing was. Court documents show that Tan had been 'bashed on the head repeatedly' with a 10.5 kilogram amethyst ornament, the sort that adorns many Chinese living rooms for good luck. Then she was throttled to death. She had 75 wounds on her body, including 14 to her head. She was missing two front teeth, had a deep cut over her right eyebrow and a fractured right eye socket. But it was clear the divorced mother of two put up a fight when Rohana, then 20, first bludgeoned her with the ornament after being upset at being scolded for oversleeping. Bleeding from the forehead, Tan made her way to the
living room, calling for her 12 year-old daughter who was sleeping with her younger sister, 6, in the master bedroom. Fearing the girls would wake up, Rohana picked up the stone ornament and again brought it down on Tan's head so hard that it broke in pieces. 'She covered Madam Tan's mouth with her hand to stop her from screaming but was bitten and kicked. She next picked up a piece of the stone and brought it down on Madam Tan's face once more. Then she started strangling the bleeding woman with her bare hands'. That was when the doorbell rang. To stop people hearing her boss's cries, Rohana dragged her by the hair to the kitchen toilet, banging her head on the wall and on the floor repeatedly.

According to court records, Tan continued to scream and to plead for her life, saying that her daughters needed her. Unmoved, Rohana dragged her into the storeroom. 'Ana, sorry lah', pleaded Tan in Singlish. 'Like that already you say sorry', Rohana replied. 'Ana, let me talk first', said Tan. 'No', was the reply. Then Rohana choked the life out of her.

Shortly before the trial began on 5 July, the Indonesian news agency issued a report that the government had sent a team of lawyers to Singapore to help defend their young citizen. The Indonesian government also escorted the girl's parents to Singapore to give her moral support. 'We hope the Singaporean court could be fair in handling this case', a government spokesman said before the trial began. Although the Public Prosecutor demanded Rohana should be jailed for life, the judge sentenced her to only ten years instead. Had this murder occurred before Flor Contemplacion was hanged, Rohana would without doubt have suffered the same fate. Alex Au, an outspoken civil rights campaigner and death penalty abolitionist, says there are also some troubling aspects of Singapore's laws and justice system. 'The common denominator seems to be that Singapore is out of step with expected norms prevailing in many other countries', he told me.

To them, and many Singaporeans, our laws and processes appear barbaric and unjustifiably loaded against the accused. Hence, each time a foreign government takes an interest in a case, we have to make ad hoc adjustments in order to avoid a crisis in
relations. In the example of the Englishman Mike McCrea, we've had to give up the death penalty in order to get him extradited from Australia at all.

But every time we make ad hoc adjustments we raise the question of equal justice. We raise the suspicion that the verdict might have been less grounded on facts than on diplomatic imperatives, which, as you can imagine, does wonders - sarcasm intended - for the dictum that justice should not only be done but seen to be done. What purpose does capital punishment serve? It doesn't even have a deterrent effect as other countries have also shown. And certainly, it has no rehabilitative effect either. You're dead, man! It's just judicial revenge, stemming from a primitive view of what justice should be. How do we convince anyone that denying an accused person access to a lawyer is good for justice? To me, this practice seems to come from a time when the chief aim was to get confessions, by whatever means. What is holding us back from bringing our justice system up to date? Pride. Damn pride. An unwillingness by our government to admit that their thinking is archaic, that they are more inclined to making their prosecutors' jobs easy than upholding human rights. An insistence they always know best. An insistence that while everybody else's norms may be fine for everybody else, a different sun shines on Singapore.

'Uniquely Singapore' is a slogan carefully crafted for the tourism industry. But following a spate of grisly murders by maids of their employers, headlines were beginning to overshadow this image with a new slogan 'Maid In Singapore'. Yet another sensational murder was revealed when an Indonesian maid who strangled her employer's mother-in-law, then slit her wrist to make it look like suicide. Purwanti Parji, 19, described as another 'Havoc Maid' by the local media was jailed for life. She had strangled her employer, Har Chit Heang, 57, in her Tai Keng Gardens home on 4 August 2004, because she had been 'too harsh' with her. The case was heard by Judicial Commissioner V.K. Rajah who said that the 'callous and heinous crime' could not be justified or condoned on the pretext of 'maid abuse'. It was clear, he said, that she had not acted because of some grave and sudden or physical provocation. Instead, she had tried systematically to cover up her involvement in the killing, which showed that she had thought through the consequences of her 'diabolical act', he said. Like violent and abusive employers, domestic workers who resort to violence in retaliation should expect harsh sentences, he added. Though initially charged with murder, Purwanti pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of manslaughter. But had she been found guilty of murder, being under
the age of 18 at the time of the crime, she would not have been sent to the gallows anyway. In court, Purwanti apologised to the victim's family, saying she was very remorseful for what she had done. But the family refused to accept it. Har's older son, Leong Meng Wei, 33, said that the killing was a 'stupid act'. Meanwhile, Har's husband, Michael Leong Kit Heng, 58, a businessman, said that while Purwanti may have escaped the death penalty, the sentence was a firm and fair one. 'She's a dangerous person', he said.

In mitigation, her assigned lawyer, Subhas Anandan, together with Mohamed Nasser Mohamed Ismail, said that Har had constantly nagged and cursed Purwanti. She made Purwanti wash and rewash soya sauce bottles if they were not cleaned to her satisfaction. Purwanti, who has had to care for her three step-brothers from the age of
nine, found herself working for two households - in Tai Keng Gardens and at Har's daughter-in-law's home in Woodlands, when she came to Singapore to work in November 2002. Har also deprived her of food and would scold her for eating more than she thought she should, said the lawyer. She was often given bread to eat by the maid next door. That morning, Har had scolded Purwanti for not cleaning the toilet properly and tried to slap her. 'That was the final straw', said Anandan. Purwanti snapped and decided to kill her tormentor. 'If maids are not treated well, unexpected and unpleasant consequences may arise', said Anandan who urged the court not to impose life imprisonment on Purwanti, a first-time offender. However, the judge said that she was 'no shrinking violet unable to fend for herself or to communicate her difficulties or distress to the world at large. She had killed Har because of longstanding resentment. It was, he said, 'disturbing case' with a number of aggravating features. Arguing for a life sentence, Deputy Public Prosecutor Jaswant Singh said the killing was deliberate and calculated, not due to any momentary loss of self-control or sudden rage but motivated by ill-feeling. Purwanti was no simpleton and had tried to cover up her act by setting up the scene to make it appear as if Har had committed suicide. She even cut her own fingernails when she saw the marks left on the neck of the deceased, he said.