Jakarta – The execution of six drug traffickers in Indonesia early Sunday, the first since President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo took office, is a retrograde step for human rights in the country, Amnesty International (AI) has said.
Those executed by firing squad today, comprising one Indonesian and five foreign nationals, had been convicted on drug trafficking charges.
"This is a seriously regressive move and a very sad day. The new administration has taken office on the back of promises to make human rights a priority, but the execution of six people flies in the face of these commitments," AI's research director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Rupert Abbott, said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The new government has announced that 20 more executions are scheduled for this year. In December 2014, it was also reported that President Jokowi would not grant clemency to at least 64 individuals who had been sentenced to death for drug-related crimes.
"The government must immediately halt plans to put more people to death. This is a country that just a few years ago had taken positive steps to moving away from the death penalty, but the authorities are now steering the country in the opposite direction," Abbott said.
"The use of the death penalty at home also makes the Indonesian authorities' efforts to fight it being applied to Indonesians abroad look hypocritical. Indonesia must impose a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to its eventual abolition," he went on.
Five of the six convicts, comprising Ang Kim Soei (Dutch), Daniel Enemuo (Nigerian), Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira (Brazilian), Namaona Denis (Nigerian), and Rani Andriani alias Melisa Aprilia (Indonesia), were executed on Nusakambangan Island, Central Java. Tran Thi Bich Hanh (Vietnamese) was executed in Boyolali, also in Central Java.
AI says it opposes the death penalty in all cases and under any circumstances, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.
"The death penalty violates the right to life as recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The protection for the right to life is also recognized in Indonesia's Constitution," it said.
So far 140 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. (ebf)