Global rights organization Amnesty International (AI) is urging President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono to call on the Saudi Arabian authorities to postpone the execution of Siti Zainab binti Duhri Rupa, an Indonesian migrant worker on death row.
AI said it had sent a letter to Yudhoyono to convey its response to information that Siti Zainab would be executed. Siti Zainab was sentenced to death for allegedly killing her employer in Saudi Arabia in 1999.
The organization said in its statement that it did not aim to ask for clemency for Siti Zainab’s alleged crime. “However, we also want to convey that we oppose death punishment regardless of the situation,” it said as quoted by kompas.com.
In its letter to President Yudhoyono, AI said it was the right and responsibility of a government in a country to bring an alleged criminal perpetrator to justice.
AI further said, however, that it opposed the death penalty, which it considered the most extreme form of torture. The death sentence also violated the right to live, as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, two international conventions that Indonesia had ratified, AI said.
“We hope that Mr President can call on the Saudi Arabian Kingdom authorities to change the sentence that has been imposed on her,” said the letter.
Siti Zainal is a migrant worker from Jl. Pasarean KH.M.Cholil in Martajasah village, Bangkalan, Madura, East Java. She departed for Saudi Arabia in 1997.
