Episode 2: Trafficking, or Trafficked? The Story of Mary Jane Veloso

On 29 April 2015, Mary Jane Veloso came within an hour of execution by firing squad in Indonesia when she was suddenly granted a reprieve. More than a decade later, following bilateral negotiations that led to her repatriation to the Philippines in 2024, Mary Jane continues to be incarcerated in her home country—despite never having been convicted of any crime there.

A former migrant domestic worker, Mary Jane was arrested in Indonesia in 2010 when a suitcase she’d been given to carry into the country was found to have heroin hidden in its lining. She was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death later that same year, after a trial conducted in a language she couldn’t understand or follow. Her experience—her family’s struggle with poverty, the push to venture abroad in search of work, her vulnerability to exploitation and manipulation—highlights a harsh, alarming reality: that, in many cases around the world, the women accused of being drug traffickers are themselves victims of trafficking.

In the second episode of Voices Beyond Verdicts, we tell the story of Mary Jane Veloso, speaking with Yuni Asriyanti of Komnas Perempuan in Indonesia and Edre Olalia of the National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers in the Philippines about the need for total abolition of the death penalty in Indonesia and ongoing efforts to secure Mary Jane’s freedom, once and for all.

This episode was produced in partnership with the Coalition Against the Death Penalty (CADP) in the Philippines.