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Jeanelyn villavende
MANILA, Philippines – The Kuwaiti employer of murdered Filipino migrant worker Jeanelyn Villavende has been sentenced to death by a criminal court in the oil-rich Arab state, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) announced Thursday.
The Philippine Embassy in Kuwait reported that the court rendered the decision on Wednesday.
Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. later announced the decision in a post on Twitter.
Fair decision
“[T]The sentence of the Criminal Court[d] a Kuwaiti citizen to death for the murder of her Filipino maid Jeanelyn Villavende, ”Locsin said. “[Philippine Embassy] Lawyer Fawziya Al Sabah (thank you for your service, sir) said the court’s decision was fair and in accordance with the law and Sharia, as the defendant assaulted her Filipino employee for days and imprisoned her in a room until her death ”.
The Philippine Embassy in Kuwait reported that the court sentenced Villavende’s employee to death by hanging and the woman’s husband to four years in prison.
“Villavende’s case against his abusive employers stood firm, born out of the swift and transparent investigation carried out by the Kuwaiti authorities, and the strong evidence presented in court against his killers,” the embassy said in a statement.
“May the court’s decision on Villavende’s murder case serve as a reminder to all that no Filipino is a slave to anyone, anywhere and everywhere, and that justice will always come in defense of the weak and oppressed.” , said.
In another post on social media, Locsin thanked Kuwait’s ambassador to the Philippines, Musaed Saleh Ahmad Althwaikh, and said he owed the diplomat “a blood debt of gratitude.”
Dead after five months
“They took my vote seriously: blood for blood, life for life. Thank you Kuwait, ”Locsin said. “To my brother, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the [Philippines], I owe you a debt of blood gratitude. My gratitude and that of my nation and my people is eternal ”. Villavende, a native of South Cotabato, went to Kuwait in July 2019 to work as a domestic worker. Five months later they found her dead, a victim of abuse. She was 26 years old.
The embalming certificate showed that Villavende died on December 28, 2019, due to “acute heart and respiratory failure as [a] Outcome [of] shock and multiple injuries to the vascular nervous system “.
A separate autopsy by the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation showed that Villavende’s brain, heart and other organs were missing.
The autopsy also showed that she had been raped before she was killed and that she had suffered beatings.
Villavende’s death sparked widespread outrage in the Philippines. The Philippine government temporarily banned the sending of maids to Kuwait to protest the violation of an agreement between the two countries for the protection of Filipino workers in the wealthy Arab state.
The ban was later lifted.
Villavende’s family accepted the Kuwaiti court’s decision on Thursday.
Grateful family
“We are happy with the sentence,” said Nelly Padernal, Villavende’s stepmother, in a radio interview in Koronadal City. “[But] Jeanelyn is gone forever. “
“We are grateful that it really was a death sentence,” said Villavende’s father, Abelardo, and thanked all the people who had helped his family seek justice for their daughter.
“Now they are even,” said Villavende’s uncle, Moisés, referring to the fate of his niece that his employer would now suffer. But he said it would have been “total justice” if his niece’s employer had also been sentenced to death.
He said that the family had been offered 5 million pesetas in “blood money”, but that his brother Abelardo had rejected it, preferring the death penalty for his daughter’s employers.
The Villavende family received P900,000 from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and P200,000 from the DFA.
That help and financial assistance from supporters has enabled the family to buy back a mortgaged estate. It was the mortgage that had caused Villavende to seek employment abroad.
The family has also created a variety store with the financial assistance it has received.
—With reports from Bong Sarmiento and Edwin Fernandez
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