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Indonesian police officers restrict access to
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High representative of foreign affairs and security police at the EU, Federica Mogherini, said the EU deplored the execution of 6 death-row inmates convicted of drug trafficking in Indonesia.
"The announced execution of 6 death-row inmates in Indonesia, including a Dutch citizen, for drug offenses is deeply regrettable. This would be the 2nd round of executions since November 2013," said the EU vice president in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
The 6 convicts, comprising Ang Kim Soei (Dutch), Daniel Enemuo (Nigerian), Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira (Brazilian), Namaona Denis (Nigerian), Rani Andriani alias Melisa Aprilia (Indonesia) and Tran Thi Bich Hanh (Vietnamese) were executed early on Sunday.
Mogherini said the EU was opposed to capital punishment in all cases and had consistently called for its universal abolition.
"The death penalty is a cruel and inhumane punishment, which fails to act as a deterrent and represents an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity. The EU calls on the Indonesian authorities to stop all pending executions and consider establishing a moratorium on the use of death penalty as a 1st step towards definitive abolition," she said.
Source: The Jakarta Post, January 18, 2015
1st executions under new RI president regression for rights: AI
The execution of 6 drug traffickers in Indonesia early Sunday, the 1st 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 1 Indonesian and 5 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 6 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.
5 of the 6 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.
Source: The Jakarta Post, January 18, 2015
Indonesia's death penalty for drug-related convictions 'deplorable', says HRW
The application of the death penalty for inmates convicted on drug trafficking charges is intolerable as international human rights law has limited the use of the death penalty to only "the most serious crimes", typically crimes resulting in death or grievous bodily harm, a New York-based rights group has said.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) noted that the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee and the UN expert on unlawful killings have condemned using the death penalty in drug cases. The UN high commissioner for human rights and the director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime have likewise expressed grave concerns about the application of the death penalty for drug offenses, it said.
"All this makes Indonesia's application of the death penalty for drug-related convictions particularly odious," HRW's deputy director for Asia division, Phelim Kine, said in a statement made available to The Jakarta Post on Sunday. 6 death row inmates convicted on drug trafficking charges, namely Ang Kin Soei (who was Dutch), Daniel Enemuo (Nigerian), Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira (Brazilian), Namaona Denis (Nigerian), Rani Andriani alias Melisia Aprilia (Indonesian) and Tran Thi Bich Hanh (Vietnamese), were executed by firing squad early on Sunday.
According to Kine, the government's decision to execute the 6 convicts contradicted its moves to save Indonesian citizens being threatened with the death penalty in other countries.
Citing an example, he said, the Indonesian government was working hard to prevent Saudi Arabia from executing Satinah Binti Jumadi Ahmad, a domestic worker who has been on death row since 2010 for allegedly murdering and robbing her Saudi employer's wife. The Indonesian government has launched a formal appeal to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia to pardon Satinah. The paying to the victim's family of a legally recognized "blood debt" equivalent to US$1.9 million in late 2014 paved the way for that possible pardon, so Satinah may be spared execution. Kine said Moreira, one of the 6 executed convicts, had been no less deserving of the Indonesian government's mercy than Satinah.
The Brazilian citizen, who was on death row in Indonesia since 2003 for drug smuggling, was less fortunate, however. According to Moreira's lawyer, the government had denied requests by the Brazilian government to extradite Moreira in order to allow him to serve a prison sentence in Brazil.Kine said the Indonesian government's pursuit of clemency for Satinah in Saudi Arabia while ignoring its own continued use of the death penalty was more than just about hypocrisy over the right to life.
"It's an expression of recently elected President Joko Widodo's avowed support for the death penalty as an 'important shock therapy' for drug-law violators," he said. Last month, the President denied petitions for clemency submitted by 5 of the ultimately executed convicts saying that the drug traffickers on death row had destroyed the future of the nation.
Sunday's executions were the 1st since the use of the death penalty on March 15, 2013, when Adami Wilson, a 48-year-old Malawian national convicted in 2004 of smuggling 1 kilogram of heroin into Indonesia, was killed by firing squad, a sentence that marked the end of a 4-year unofficial moratorium on capital punishment.
"The President has an opportunity to demonstrate wise leadership by recognizing the well-documented failure of the death penalty as a crime deterrent and joining the growing number of countries that have abolished capital punishment," said Kine.
Source: The Jakarta Post, January 18, 2015
