Ignoring pleas and protests, Singapore Friday hanged a Filipino maid convicted of a double murder, bringing renewed criticism of its strict criminal justice system.
Flor Contemplacion, 42, was executed at dawn at Changi prison for the 1991 murders of Della Maga - also a Filipino maid - and the woman's 4-year-old charge, Nicholas Huang.Contemplacion, who was convicted last April, said she was coerced into confessing. The Philippines asked Singapore to delay the execution long enough to review new evidence, but the government said the purported evidence was false.
Anger swept the Philippines at the news of the hanging. Leftist and feminist groups, human rights activists and the media denounced Singapore as a barbaric, tyrannic and totalitarian state with no respect for human rights. The Roman Catholic Church called Singapore a state without mercy.
"It's all over, it's all over. Now they have got an innocent person," cried Romeo Capulong, a Filipino human rights lawyer who camped in Singapore, campaigning vigorously to save Contemplacion during the past week.
"We are not absolving Flor," said Lito Atienza, the vice mayor of Manila, the Philippine capital. "What we wanted was a retrial. Nothing could have been lost if the hanging had been postponed."
The case focused new attention on Singapore's uncompromising laws that came into the limelight when U.S. teenager Michael Fay was flogged for vandalism despite a mercy plea by President Clinton and when Dutchman Johannes van Damme was hanged on drug charges in September despite pleas from the Netherlands and human rights groups.