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Filipina found dead in rented room in Singapore


(Updated 10:12 p.m.) Authorities found on Monday a body of a Filipina with stab wounds in an apartment in Singapore, a report said. The remains of 30-year-old Roselyn Pascua were recovered by the police past 3 a.m. in her room at Peony Mansion, a low-cost lodging house along the city’s Bencoolen Street. In a report from The Straits Times, authorities have alerted taxi drivers to watch for five suspects, three of them also Filipinas. Pascua sustained multiple stab wounds on her left chest. Her bloodied body, only in a black top and an underwear, was found lying on the floor of her unlocked room on the building’s 5th floor. The report further said that the occupant of a nearby room had heard suspicious sounds from where Pascua was staying and alerted the apartment’s caretaker. She reportedly arrived in the city from the Philippines about three weeks ago to visit relatives and friends there. Arrests have yet to be made and the police have declined to say if any murder weapon was recovered in the crime scene. According to the report, some of the three-room apartments in the Peony Mansion have been partitioned into eight-rooms inns that are then rented out to budget travelers and Singaporeans for as low as S$25 a day. Another report said the lodging house’s occupants are mostly women from the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand. As this developed, Charge d'Affaires Nathaniel G. Imperial of the Philippine Embassy in the island-state said Singapore authorities are investigating the Filipina's death as a case of “unnatural death." In a release posted on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Embassy also said it has requested a copy of the autopsy report which it will forward to Pascua’s next of kin. A Coroner’s Inquiry will likewise be conducted to determine the victim’s cause of death. The Embassy is assisting in the ongoing police investigation and will provide assistance to the family including the early repatriation of the Filipina's remains, the release further noted. On the other hand, migrants’ rights group Migrante International in a statement expressed sympathy to Pascua’s family and urged the Philippine government to help investigate the case. “It is quite saddening that as we remember Flor Contemplacion’s death, we are confronted with another death of a kababayan (compatriot) in Singapore under mysterious circumstances," Migrante chair Garry Martinez said. Martinez was referring to the Filipina domestic worker who was executed by the Singaporean government on March 17, 1995 for murder. “We hope that justice will be achieved in this case and that it will not be counted in the long list of mysterious deaths where culprits have never been surfaced and punished," he added. Migrante has recorded 51 cases of unsolved deaths of Filipinos in the island city-state in 2008. From January to June last year, the remains of at least 21 Filipinos were repatriated from Singapore, Martinez said. Citing records from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, Maigrante said that in 2008, there were 158, 231 Filipinos in Singapore. About 70 percent of them were women working mostly as domestic workers, according to Migrante. — Jerrie Abella/LBG, GAMNews.TV
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