RSSMANILA (UCAN) – The president of the league of the country’s Islamic religious leaders has appealed for help in saving the life of a Filipina worker on death row in Kuwait.
A Kuwaiti court yesterday upheld the death sentence against Jakatia Pawa, a maid, for the 2007 murder of her employer’s daughter.
Under Shari’a law, her life can be spared by the victim’s family.
Shari’a Court Judge Abu Ali Cali, president of the Ulama League of the Philippines (ULP), told UCA News he wrote to fellow ulama (Islamic scholars) in Kuwait “so Jakatia can receive the required letter of forgiveness from the family.”
Pawa, 34, a Muslim from Zamboanga Sibugay in Mindanao, maintains her innocence and observers have called into question the apparent lack of evidence against her.
“Muslims here have code of working so justice can be shown to all Filipinos, especially Muslims, working overseas,” Cali told UCA News from Marawi City, also in Mindanao.
While the Philippine government is also appealing for Pawa’s life to be spared, the ULP acted on its own initiative.
‘We hope Pawa will be released through Shari’a law’
“We seek more understanding and cooperation from our brother Muslims (in Kuwait).
“We hope (Pawa) will be released through Shari’a Law and allowed to return to the Philippines where she can live her life fully as a Filipina Muslim,” the ULP president said.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Esteban Cornejos told reporters in Manila that Vice President Noli de Castro will go to Kuwait to personally deliver a letter from President Gloria Arroyo to Kuwait’s emir appealing for the death sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment.
Around 73,000 Philippine nationals work in Kuwait. At least 60,000 are women employed as maids, according to official estimates.
The Migrante International political party in a report last year said that at least 41 Filipino migrant workers were on death row around the world, mostly in the Middle East.
Around 5,000 Filipino workers are imprisoned in various countries, Migrante said.
Ulama on their own or working with Catholic and Protestant Church leaders through the Bishops-Ulama Conference (BUC) have “a long history of interceding for Filipinos in the Middle East countries either seeking their release or seeking a letter of forgiveness so that blood money could be paid,” conference member Aleem Elias Macarandas told UCA News on Jan. 21.
Cali’s predecessor in the ULP, the late Mahid Mutilan convened BUC with Catholic Archbishop Fernando Capalla of Davao as a forum in 1996 to unite religious leaders in working for peace and development in troubled Mindanao.
Protestant bishops joined the forum the following year and in 2003 it was converted into a conference.
PR08603.1585 January 22, 2010 56 EM-lines (434 words)
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