Legal experts have criticized Attorney General Abdul Rahman Saleh over his rigid stance regarding the implementation of capital punishment in Indonesia.
"Despite progress in the country's legal system, such as the on going judicial review on the death penalty for drug dealers in the 1997 Narcotics Law, the Attorney General has not yet been able to escape from his legalistic and normative views on capital punishment," the Operational Director of the Indonesian Human Rights Monitor Imparsial, Rusdi Marpaung, told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.
"Regarding drug trafficking, for example, the government cannot solely rely on deterrence principles to handle such a crime. "There are other problems that need attention, such as monitoring the abuse of addictive substances and the involvement of government officials in drug trafficking," he said.
Rusdi was commenting on a statement by the Attorney General on Friday that the government would continue implementing the death penalty in criminal cases, including for drug abuse and trafficking.
"Capital punishment in our legal system has been adopted from the old Dutch legal system during the colonial period. Holland itself abolished the implementation of the death penalty over 50 years ago," he said.
According to Rusdi, the United Nations has reported that there is no evidence to suggest that the death penalty is an effective deterrence towards crime.
The Executive Director for the Center for Indonesian Law and Policy Studies, Bivitri Susanti, also said capital punishment was ineffective in preventing crime.
"Its deterrence effect has been proven ineffective, especially when court verdicts have turned out to be wrongly implemented... And the death penalty itself violates basic principles of human rights, no matter what the case is," Bivitri told the Post
"It would be better for the government to make sure the jail terms imposed on prisoners are fully implemented," she said, citing that many inmates in Indonesia had managed to walk out of prison before completing their jail sentences.
Rusdi agreed, saying the United States hands down maximum jail terms of up to 200 years. "That way, American prisoners still naturally die in prison, but not because of the death penalty."
Bivitri said it was not necessary for Indonesia to remove capital punishment from its legal system as some countries have done. "As in other countries, Indonesia could still retain capital punishment in its legal system, but only on the condition that the judges selectively impose the sentence on convicts," she said.
Besides the narcotics law, other laws including the death penalty are the Criminal Code, the Anticorruption Law, the Antiterrorism Law, the Law on the possession of firearms and explosives, the Law on subversive activities and the 2000 Law on the Human Rights Court.
According to Rusdi, about 60 laws in Indonesia's legal system apply capital punishment, including new laws such as the State Secrecy Bill.