Indonesia keeps death penalty despite 10-year execution hiatus

Indonesia has not carried out an execution in a decade, yet it continues to impose death sentences and holds hundreds of people on death row under a new criminal code that reclassifies capital punishment as a measure of last resort.

The country’s last executions occurred in 2016, when four people convicted of drug trafficking were put to death by firing squad. No further executions have taken place. The pause meets thresholds used by international organizations to describe a country as de facto abolitionist, even though the death penalty remains legal.

A new Criminal Code that took effect in January 2026 no longer treats the death penalty as a principal punishment. The code designates it a “special punishment” that may be imposed only as a last resort and as an alternative to life imprisonment or a fixed-term sentence. Every death sentence includes a mandatory 10-year probation period. A prisoner who demonstrates commendable conduct during that time may have the sentence commuted to life imprisonment by presidential decree after a recommendation from the Supreme Court.

Courts still impose death sentences 

Sentencing has continued despite the change. A 2026 report by the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (Kontras) found that 639 people, including nine women, were on death row as of April, an increase from 596 the previous August. Drug-related offenses accounted for 441 of those cases, followed by 165 for murder. Courts handed down at least 68 new death sentences in 2025, the large majority for drug crimes. Government figures cited in early October placed the total nearer 680.

Foreign nationals make up a significant share of those sentenced to death. Official data showed about 95 foreign nationals from roughly a dozen countries under sentence of death in 2025, nearly all for drug offenses, with the number rising slightly into 2026. Indonesia maintains some of Southeast Asia’s strictest anti-drug laws, and capital punishment has long been used against traffickers.

A broader regional narrowing of capital punishment

Human rights organizations have raised concerns about the continued use of the death penalty for drug offenses. Groups including Kontras note that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights limits capital punishment to the “most serious crimes,” a standard that excludes ordinary drug crimes. They also point to the psychological toll of prolonged uncertainty. Some prisoners have waited more than 20 years. Implementing regulations for the commutation process under the new code have been slow to appear, leaving many cases unresolved.

The developments place Indonesia in a mixed regional picture. Cambodia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste have abolished the death penalty in law. Malaysia has sharply reduced its death-row population through recent reforms. Brunei and Laos have long maintained execution hiatuses. Within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, only a small number of countries have carried out executions in recent years. Amnesty International has described Indonesia’s decade without executions and its legal changes as part of a broader regional narrowing of capital punishment, even as new sentences continue.

For now, Indonesia remains a retentionist state in law while operating as a non-executing state in practice. The combination of a formal hiatus, ongoing sentencing, and an incomplete transition under the new code leaves hundreds of people sentenced to death under rules that have shifted, yet still without a clear resolution.

Nusa Kambangan Island

Indonesia’s last executions took place in the early hours of July 29, 2016, when four convicted drug traffickers were shot by firing squad on the prison island of Nusa Kambangan in Cilacap, Central Java. 

Those executed were Indonesian Freddy Budiman and three foreign nationals: Nigerians Humphrey Jefferson Ejike Eleweke and Michael Titus Igweh, and Senegalese Seck Osmane. Ten other death-row prisoners who had been prepared for the same round were spared at the last minute for legal reasons. 

The executions followed a far more controversial round in April 2015, when eight people were put to death on the same island: two Australians from the Bali Nine heroin-smuggling group, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran; Rodrigo Gularte (Brazil); Zainal Abidin (Indonesia); Martin Anderson (Ghana); Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise (Nigeria); Raheem Agbaje Salami (Nigeria); and Okwudili Oyatanze (Nigeria). 

Filipina Mary Jane Veloso and Frenchman Serge Atlaoui were among those granted last-minute reprieves in 2015.

Mary Jane Veloso was returned to the Philippines on December 18, 2024, under a prisoner transfer agreement. She remained in Philippine custody until September 25, 2026, when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. granted her an absolute pardon; she was released that night and is now free, living with her family in Nueva Ecija.

Serge Atlaoui was repatriated to France on February 4, 2025. A French court later commuted his sentence, and he was granted conditional release, leaving prison on July 18, 2025. He is now free in France.

The 2015 killings triggered intense international protest, including Australia’s temporary recall of its ambassador, diplomatic pressure from several governments, and widespread criticism from human rights groups and the public at large over Indonesia’s use of capital punishment for drug offenses.

Source: DPN, Staff, News Outlets, AI, October 25, 2026

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde

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