InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5
MANILA - (UPDATE - 6:56 p.m.) Vice President Jejomar Binay will leave for China on a mercy mission to try to save a Filipino drug trafficker on death row, the Department of Foreign Affairs said Thursday.
The country's Catholic bishops also joined calls for clemency, saying they would send a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao to commute the Filipino's death sentence to life iimprisonment.
Binay will convey a request from President Benigno Aquino III to spare the life of the 35-year-old man who is set to be executed Dec. 8, foreign affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said.
The government was awaiting final confirmation from Chinese authorities on who would meet Binay so the date of the trip could be finalized, Hernandez said.
"We want to ensure that he is able to meet top officials in China who would be appropriate for this issue," Hernandez told AFP.
The death row inmate was caught on September 2008 at the Guilin International Airport smuggling about 1.5 kilograms (three pounds five ounces) of heroin into China from Malaysia, the foreign department said.
His death sentence was confirmed late last month, Hernandez said.
Binay went on a similar mission in February to China to save three Filipino drug mules from the death row, and secured a temporary stay of execution.
But Beijing went ahead with the executions a month later, triggering widespread condemnation in the Catholic Philippines where capital punishment was abolished in 2006.
Those executions put the spotlight on the country's millions of Filipino overseas workers, some of whom are duped into doing illegal activities in exchange for extra cash to send to their families back home.
“Magpapadala tayo ng sulat sa China para mag-appeal for humanitarian reason na i-commute na lang to life sentenced instead na death penalty. Kasi kailangan din naman nating ituring ang batas ng ibang bansa na nagkataon lamang na ito ang death penalty ng China (We will send a letter to China to appeal for humanitarian reasons to commute to a life sentence the death penalty),” Fr. Edwin Corros, executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission on Migrant and Itinerant People of the Catholic Bishops of the Philippines, said on a church-run radio station Veritas.
He also appealed to overseas Filipinos not to fall for the lure of quick money that drug syndicates offer for them to become drug mules.
At the same time, Corros urged government to address the cases of more than 200 other Filipinos also facing the death penalty abroad.
