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Central Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. Alya Andreani and her sister, Mislah, were both considered successful by the standards of their village.

They were migrant workers on the affluent island of Macau, each earning about Rp 3 million ($340) a month, enough to allow their aging parents back in Pelambek village to build a modest home, set up a small store and raise goats.

They were also fortunate enough to have employers who treated them well and often took them traveling.

The daughters of many of the other 300 families in the village had not fared as well, most of them working under more demanding conditions in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, often for much less money, Mislah said.

But the family’s dream ended abruptly with the news — more than a year late — that Alya, 29, had been sentenced to death for smuggling drugs in China.

“We never dreamed that we would face such a nightmare,” Mislah, 34, told the Jakarta Globe recently at the family’s home.

“My sister was an innocent village girl who lucked out with a job as a baby sitter in Macau, so for this to happen is a nightmare.”

No Notification

Alya was arrested by customs officials at the Shekou ferry terminal in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, on July 3 last year, after a short boat ride from Macau.

Officers found 795 grams of heroin concealed in her luggage and charged her with trafficking.

The Indonesian Consulate in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, was informed of her arrest and assigned a representative to sit through her trial. But officials never informed her family back home, including Mislah, who had returned in early 2010.

In March of this year, Alya was convicted of trafficking and given a two-year suspended death sentence — meaning that if she exhibits good behavior during two years of incarceration, the sentence will be commuted to life in prison.

Again, Mislah said the family was not notified. It was only after an appeals court upheld the sentence in July that the Foreign Ministry’s director general of protocol and consular affairs, Lutfi Rauf, got in touch with the family.

In a two-page letter, sent a fortnight after the conviction was upheld, the entire case was laid out in terse bullet points, concluding that the consulate had spoken with Alya, who said she was resigned to her fate and would throw herself on the court’s mercy.

“We’re devastated by the whole thing,” Mislah said. “The consulate should have informed us from the moment that my sister was arrested.”

Little Hope

Mislah said that although the severity of Alya’s fate had begun to sink in, she still held out hope for a possible release, faint though the possibility might be.

“I’ve studied the Chinese remission law on the Internet and it says that after the two-year period is up, and she behaves well in prison for the next 10 years, then the life sentence can be reduced to 20 years,” she said. “I really hope my sister can be released, but it looks very unlikely.”

Their parents, Safoan, 59, and Romlah, 50, also refuse to accept that they have lost Alya.

“We miss her so much and we want to see her again,” Safoan said, his body quivering. “Even if I can’t get to meet her in person, I’d like to at least speak with her.”

He says he has already pleaded with the Central Lombok Legislative Council to lobby for a commuted sentence for his daughter and is awaiting a reply.

“She went so far from home just to make a living. I hope the government can help us free her from the death sentence,” he said.

No Intervention?

A public and media uproar in June over the execution of Ruyati binti Sapubi, a maid convicted of murdering her employer in Saudi Arabia, prompted the Indonesian government to lobby for clemency for the other two dozen Indonesians on death row in the kingdom.

It managed to save Darsem binti Dawud Tawar, who had been sentenced to death, by paying Rp 4.7 billion in compensation to the family of the maid’s victim.

But Mislah said she would not hold her breath waiting for a similar intervention, based on the treatment of her sister’s case so far by Indonesian officials.