Paraguay tries to stop execution of woman in China
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Version 0 of 1. BEIJING — Rosalia Amarilla stepped into the international terminal of Beijing’s cavernous main airport on the afternoon of July 24, 2012, with more than 7 pounds of cocaine stuffed into her underwear and bra. An acquaintance named Carlos had given the 31-year-old Paraguayan the drug-filled undergarments to wear before she boarded a flight in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Doha, Qatar, and then Beijing. Security officials nabbed her before she could meet two Chinese waiting for her outside the airport. Chinese prosecutors and her defenders agree that is how the clothes vendor ended up in a women’s prison far from home, awaiting execution on drug trafficking charges. Paraguayan prosecutors and diplomats, as well as human rights activists, argue that Amarilla was forced to carry the narcotics and should not be put to death. Her plight has become a cause celebre in her small South American home country and a controversy internationally. Paraguayan senators have signed letters demanding her release, and her friends and former high school classmates have marched through the streets of the capital of Asuncion demanding she be sent home. Santiago Fiorio, an official with Paraguay’s Foreign Ministry, said the Chinese have said the courts will review the case in July. The Chinese Foreign Ministry added more details in a statement, saying the Beijing High Court approved a two-year suspension of her death sentence in July 2013. Judicial authorities in China often commute death sentences to life in prison or other non-capital punishments after such suspensions. Amarilla’s court-appointed Chinese defense attorney, Bai Baoli, declined to comment. Back at home, the woman’s older sister, Patricia Amarilla, said her family is hoping the campaign to save Rosalia will shed light not only on her case, but also on those of other Paraguayan women who have been forced to serve as drug mules for international traffickers, usually under threat. “We want this to be an example so that there are no more women in this situation,” the sister said. “We’re hoping that we will see Rosalia coming home.” Elba Núñez, the regional coordinator of CLADEM, a Latin American women’s rights group, said it’s unknown how many women share Amarilla’s plight but called the trafficking of Paraguayans in particular a “grave and very dangerous problem.” Fiorio said some 3,000 Paraguayans now sit in foreign jails but couldn’t say how many were being held for drug trafficking. With Paraguay already a regional smuggling hot spot, it’s also a source country for women and children subjected to the sex trade and for forced labor, according to the U.S. State Department. In Amarilla’s case, Paraguayan prosecutors have identified her as a victim of human trafficking even as they continue investigating how she was brought from Paraguay to China, said Alice Resquin, an official in the prosecutors’ human trafficking department. In its report on Amarilla’s case, CLADEM said her traffickers were also being sought in the cases of other Paraguayan women who were trapped “under severe threat” and “who remain for weeks and even months under their traffickers’ control.” — Associated Press |