[STATEMENT] Mary Jane is Free! Now We Must Free All Mary Janes!
IMA Asia Pacific Statement on the Pardon of Mary Jane Veloso
25th September 2026
After more than 15 years of imprisonment and on death row, Mary Jane Veloso has finally been granted absolute pardon and is free to return to her family and community. But Mary Jane's case exposes a much bigger injustice: the conditions that force millions of Filipinos to leave their families and communities behind in search of work abroad.
Mary Jane came from a poor family in the Philippines. Like most Filipino migrant workers, she sought opportunities overseas because decent and secure livelihoods were not available to her at home. Before her arrest in Indonesia, she had already gone to the United Arab Emirates to earn money for her children. She was then recruited to go to Indonesia for what she believed was a job as a domestic worker.
Instead, she was deceived by people she trusted and sent across borders carrying a suitcase containing heroin sewn into its seams. She was arrested in Yogyakarta in April 2010, convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death. She spent 15 years in jail, separated from her children and facing execution.
Mary Jane's survival was won through mass struggle and perseverance of her fellow kababayan (country people) back home in the Philippines and abroad. Her family, migrant organisations, women's groups, lawyers, human-rights defenders, church groups and activists in the Philippines, Indonesia and around the world mobilised to save her life. Migrante International, Beranda Migran, Gabriela and other organisations led a global campaign that generated hundreds of thousands of supporters.
That movement helped prevent her execution in 2015. In December 2024, after further campaigning for her to return to the Philippines and give clemency, Mary Jane was transferred back to the Philippines. Now, in September 2026, she has received an absolute pardon.
Mary Jane is home and free. But why did she have to leave the Philippines in the first place? No Filipino should have to gamble their life and safety to provide for their children. No mother should have to leave her family because decent work, livelihood and social security are unavailable at home. Gabriela has likewise described her case as a reflection of a system that pushes Filipinos abroad because of poverty, low wages and the lack of decent jobs.
It is not enough to make labour migration "safer." We must also make staying home possible. The Philippine government must create decent and secure jobs, living wages, good living conditions, public services and genuine opportunities so that Filipinos are not forced to leave their families and communities just to survive. But instead, the government continues to promote the export of Filipino workers to countries which abuse, exploit and even kill them. The issue is deeper than the protection of workers abroad. Filipinos must have the right to a decent life without being forced to become migrant workers in the first place.
Mary Jane is free. Now we must free all the Mary Janes.There are still millions of migrant workers who continue to face exploitation, trafficking, discrimination, abuse, detention and separation from their families. We must free all migrants from a system that tells them their only path to a decent life is to leave their own country.
Mary Jane's freedom was won through persistent collective action. Let us turn that victory into a movement for the freedom of all migrant workers—and for the right of everyone to live in their own homeland.
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