Friday, March 01, 2013

Yuliana Should Have Been Given Legal Counsel

So all right. Most everyone saw on Youtube what the 24 year-old Indonesian maid did to her employer's  baby. Horrific. Tossing and flipping him on the mat like he was a doll.

Only a mad person would do that. Or a person with no love or care or a heart.

She was captured on the CCTV at the couple's Kuantan home on Friday (Feb 15).

Mohamed Zamri and Nina Suraya Sulaiman - the young  Kuantan couple -were having breakfast when they caught the visual on Zamri's cellphone.

It was Yuliana's first day at work.

By the following Tuesday, she was arrested, detained,charged in court and convicted of attempted murder and abuse of  four-month-old Mohamed Hareez Mohamed Zamri -- 20 years jail (15 for the first charge and 5 for the second.)

Yuliana, a mother of two from Aceh - had pleaded guilty to the charges and had no legal counsel.

I remember the swift comments on facebook when the footage was uploaded and went viral. People were horrified. Some went ballistic. Others were baying for blood.

I was among those who were so so upset. The poor little helpless baby.Like everyone else, I thought she was mentally "tak betul" because if you had seen the video, you would see her carrying the baby after presumably bathing him, like normal, towel-drying him, feeding him with a bottle, and only a few minutes after, that she seemed to have lost it.

But "attempted murder"? and 20 years? No legal representation?

I wanted to know whether she was mad, or simply bad and evil? And why had the baby's parents left him with the maid who had just started employment?

We all want justice to be served  swiftly. And I could hear the cheers when she was convicted so swiftly -- "padan muka", "she deserves a life sentence", "et her rot in jail".

Those were emotions I heard. Those showed a sense of vicarious satisfaction because -- hah -- this time it is a bad Indon maid. Not a bad Malaysian employer.

But this woman had no legal counsel to advise her on such a seriosu charge dof attempted murder.

I don't believe for one minute that Yuliana should go free. She has to be punished. But I think the judge erred in trying hard to make an example of her.

Do read my Saturday NST column here:

THE anger was palpable. The reaction to the conviction was jubilant. It was emotional. The maid did it and she must be punished.
Everyone agrees that 24-year-old Indonesian Yuliana, whose first day at work for a young Kuantan couple last Friday was to be her last, did a horrific thing to four-month-old Mohamed Hareez Mohamed Zamri at their Lorong Bukit Setongkol home.
Our hearts went out to his parents -- Mohamed Zamri and Nina Suraya Sulaiman.
So, when the mother of two from Aceh was quickly arrrested, detained, charged in a Sessions Court and sentenced to 20 years jail -- all within three days -- everyone was vicariously satisfied.
Everyone applauded.

The rest of the article HERE.

 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trial! I want to hear HER side of the story, at the very least.

Naj

manmanlai said...

Nuraina,I thought that employers are crazy ill treating their maids.Now we have crazy maids ill treating their cares.

Then we have Deepak turning on his benefactors.Later we have Warthamoorty coming back to cozy up to Umnoputras,after running away from them.Now we have Bala coming home to roost the goose egg for Pakatan Rakyat.Malaysia is sure the land of the bolehs.

mak tiri said...

please check the maid background... maybe she was forced to come here leaving her kids... check her husband too...

NURAINA A SAMAD said...

manmanlai,

now, don;t you just Malaysia?

we don;t need any astro channel for drama...

NURAINA A SAMAD said...

Naj (anon@9:48am): absolutely!

mak tiri: exactly...

Anonymous said...

It's probably because the Indonesians hate us Malaysians.

I don't hear about this case much on Indonesian tv, but when it involves maids getting abused by employers it's repeated on tv again and again, and then you see they would bring up the usual list of Malaysian injustice towards Indonesia, and then demos, ganyang malaysia, Bendera etc bla bla bla.
They still think Sipadan was theirs and Malaysia stole it.

BTW, this probably only got caught because of cctv. I suppose cctv is a prudent investment nowadays.

Anonymous said...

No..Indonesians does not hate Malaysian. Sometime we do get carried away.
Justice need to seen to be done. Something for us to ponder in this case.