Indonesia has some of the world’s toughest drug laws and executed 14 drug convicts – mostly foreigners – last year, to widespread global condemnation.
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However preparations for the executions are intensifying at Cilacap in Central Java, the gateway to the penal island of Nusakambangan, where the prisoners will be shot dead by special police known as BRIMOB around midnight on Friday.
As planning intensifies, the global community and local lawyers have become increasingly vocal, with The UN Human Rights Office expressing “deep concern about the lack of transparency throughout the process and compliance with fair trial guarantees”.
“President Jokowi should acknowledge the death penalty’s barbarity and avoid a potential diplomatic firestorm by sparing the lives of the 14 or more people facing imminent execution”, said Phelim Kine, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement released Wednesday.
Nigerians will be among the 14 death row prisoners scheduled to be executed on Thursday in Indonesia.
Muhammad Rum, a spokesman for the attorney-general, said the executions were the “implementation of the country’s “positive laws” and would not be delayed”.
“The death penalty is not an effective deterrent relative to other forms of punishment nor does it protect people from drug abuse”.
Pakistan is angry about the planned execution of Ali – whom rights groups claim was beaten into confessing – and summoned Indonesia’s ambassador in Islamabad this week.
Pakistan Embassy in Jakarta on Wednesday approached the highest offices in Indonesia, seeking postponement of the execution of Zulfiqar Ali – a Pakistan citizen – and requesting a review of the trial.
CILACAP, Indonesia (AP) Indonesia quickly rebuffed appeals from the United Nations human rights chief and the European Union to abandon plans to execute 14 people for drug crimes as preparations intensified Thursday at the prison island where the death row inmates are held. The government has put more men to death in the last two years than it had in the previous decade.
In a tweet late on Wednesday night, Swaraj said: “We are making last minute efforts to save him (Singh) from execution on 28 July”.
At the last moment Filipina Mary Jane Veloso, also sentenced to death, was spared.
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Indonesia has a strong record of fighting for the rights of its citizens overseas on death row but that is a position the authorities do not consistently uphold at home, where President Widodo has claimed the death penalty is needed to deter drug crime, Amnesty said. He called on the government of President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo to impose an immediate moratorium on executions. “We believe that Indonesia should strongly consider joining the vast majority of countries, 140 out of 190, that have abolished the death penalty”, he said. It says Indonesian police used violent duress to obtain a confession from Ali, who was arrested in November 2004. Of the more than 1,600 publicly announced executions past year, Amnesty says almost 90 percent of them were in three countries: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran. I don’t know what to say, we don’t have time. she added.
