Press Release
June 14, 2007

Jinggoy urges assistance for 30 OFWs in death row

Opposition stalwart Sen. Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada yesterday urged the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to do everything to save the 30 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), including two women, that are still in death row in various countries after a Filipino welder was executed by Saudi Arabian authorities last Wednesday.

Estrada said the government should work harder to have the death sentences of the Filipinos in Saudi Arabia and other countries be commuted to save their lives.

The DFA reported that Filipino Reynaldo Cortez, 41, a welder at the Al-Allah Car Workshop in Riyadh's Sinaya District, was executed in Riyadh for stabbing to death a Pakistani taxi driver. Cortez claimed he killed the Pakistani in self defense after the Pakistani tried to rape him.

In December 2003, the Riyadh Grand Court found Cortez, a native of Sorsogon, guilty of murder and sentenced him with the death penalty.

The death sentence on Cortez, who left behind a wife and six children in Guagua, Pampanga, was carried out after the victims family rejected with finality the offer of 100,000 Saudi rials as blood money and insisted his beheading.

The DFA said the Filipino diplomats negotiated with the family of the Pakistani victim twice in October 2005 and January 2006, but both efforts failed.

Migrante International, a suggort group for OFWs, said that weeks before the execution, Cortez sent text messages appealing for government help to stop his beheading.

Cortez was also quoted by a TV station in Manila that he went to Saudi Arabia to work and save money for his family in the Philippines, and not to murder a people. He insisted that what he done was self-defense.

Estrada said that "it seems that the DFA's efforts were not enough to save Cortez," so the administration of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo "should exert more effort" and "try a little bit harder" to commute the death sentences of the 33 remaining Filipinos now in death row.

Quoting the death watch made by Migrante, Estrada said, Cortez was the fifth OFW executed abroad under the Arroyo administration.

In March 2005, Sergio Aldana, Antonio Alvesa, Wilfredo Bautista and Miguel Fernandez were also beheaded in Saudi Arabia.

The OFWs now in death row include three Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia, one in Iran, 10 in Malaysia and China, and three others in Brunei and Kuwait.

Estrada said Malacanang should order Filipino diplomats to exert more effort to seek the communitation or acquittal of the OFWs who are facing the death penalty abroad.

"The government has the responsibility to help OFWs who are in distress abroad to prove that the government recognizes that the overseas workers are the new heroes of our society," Estrada said, adding:

"Its hightime to pay back the new heroes of our society by ensuring their protection and welfare. Bawat isang OFW ay mahalaga."

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