Tensions Mount Over Hanging of Philippine Maid

The Philippines and Singapore recalled their ambassadors Wednesday as relations between the two countries plummeted in a dispute over the hanging of a Philippine maid.

Manila’s anger over Friday’s hanging in Singapore of Flor Contemplacion grew into a full-blown crisis as President Fidel V. Ramos announced the indefinite recall of his envoy, Alice Ramos, and banned any more maids from going to the island state.

Singapore, saying it was saddened by the turn relations with Manila had taken, responded by recalling Ambassador Tan Seng Chye for consultations.

Ramos said the Philippines is ready to break ties with Singapore--one of its partners in the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations--if an inquiry he has ordered finds that Contemplacion was unjustly hanged.

Diplomats said the dispute is the worst crisis to confront the 28-year-old ASEAN since 1968, when the Philippines and Malaysia came to the edge of a diplomatic rupture over Manila’s territorial claim to the state of Sabah in east Malaysia.

Ramos also postponed a naval exercise with the Singaporean navy planned for July and said that an air force plane was standing by to fly home any of the 75,000 Filipinos working in Singapore if they feared for their safety.

Contemplacion was hanged for the 1991 killing of another Philippine maid and a Singaporean boy. She confessed, but many Filipinos remain convinced she was innocent.