Spotlight on fate of Paraguayandrug mule on death row in China

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Spotlight on fate of Paraguayandrug mule on death row in China

Paraguayan awaits execution for smuggling cocaine into China, but rights groups say she and others like her are forced to carry drugs

PUBLISHED : Sunday, 25 January, 2015, 7:46am
UPDATED : Sunday, 25 January, 2015, 7:46am

Associated Press in Beijing

Amarilla in her mother's picture.

Rosalia Amarilla stepped into the international terminal of Beijing's cavernous main airport on the afternoon of July 24, 2012, wearing more than 3kg of cocaine in her underwear and bra.

An acquaintance named Carlos had given the 31-year-old Paraguayan the drug-filled garments to wear in Sao Paulo, Brazil, before she boarded a flight to Doha 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 trafficking charges. Paraguayan prosecutors and diplomats, as well as rights activists, argue Amarilla was forced to carry the narcotics and should not be put to death.

Her plight has become a cause célebre in her small South American home country and a controversy internationally. Paraguayan senators have signed letters demanding her release, and her friends and former classmates have marched through the streets of the capital, Asuncion. Earlier this month, the country's top diplomat brought up Amarilla's case with his Chinese counterparts in Beijing.

Santiago Fiorio, an official with the Foreign Ministry's rights department, said the Chinese had revealed the courts would review the case in July. In Beijing, the Foreign Ministry added more details, 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.

Back at home, the woman's older sister Patricia Amarilla said her family was hoping the campaign to save Rosalia would shed light not only on her case, but on those of other Paraguayan women who have been forced to serve as drug mules for international traffickers, usually under threat.

Patricia said the family lost contact with Rosalia for about six months before learning she had been sentenced to death.

"We want this to be an example so there are no more women in this situation," the sister said. "We're hoping that we will see Rosalia coming home."

Elba Nunez, the regional coordinator of Cladem, a Latin American women's rights group, said it was unknown how many women shared Amarilla's plight but called the trafficking of Paraguayans in particular a "grave and very dangerous problem".

Fiorio said some 3,000 Paraguayans now sat in foreign jails, but could not say how many were being held for trafficking.

With Paraguay already a regional smuggling hot spot for everything from electronics to illicit cash, it is also a source country for women and children subjected to the sex trade, and for forced labour, according to the US State Department.

A clip from Chinese TV news shows another Paraguayan woman, Eulalia Duarte Estigarribia, caught at Beijing's airport with cocaine stuffed into her undergarments. Neither Nunez nor Fiorio knew the circumstances of Duarte's arrest.

In Amarilla's case, Paraguayan prosecutors had identified her as a victim of human trafficking even as they continued investigating how she was brought from Paraguay to China, said Alice Resquin, an official in the Paraguayan prosecutor's human trafficking department.

Rosalia Vega, the executive director of Amnesty International in Paraguay, said: "We know she's been threatened, as has her family."

Nunez said Cladem had devoted itself to locating and aiding such people caught in trafficking rings.

"It's mainly women who are victims, who are looking for better work," she said. "We want to know how many cases there are in China and in the region. These are extremely dangerous international networks, who make a practice of doing this."