JAKARTA, 28 March 2005 — The prospect that a 27-year-old Australian student beautician may be sentenced to death in Indonesia for smuggling cannabis into the popular resort island of Bali in a body board bag has drawn attention to the country’s use of the death penalty and a resumption of executions in recent months. Even conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard has come to the defense of the young woman, pledging to try to get new evidence to trial that may help secure her release. The case prompted Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to also ask Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono this week to spare the life of a Brazilian sentenced to death on drug charges.
But clemency pleas to Indonesia’s president seem to fall on deaf ears these days, even for the country’s own nationals. The president rejected the pleas of 49-year-old Astini, a woman charged with the murder of three other women between 1993 and 1995, before she was put before a firing squad last Sunday. She was the first Indonesian to be executed since 2001 and what some are calling the first female to be executed in the country’s history. “I was shocked, really shocked,” said Nursjahbani Katjasungkana, a lawyer and member of Parliament. “Last January I met with Astini and she asked to cancel the execution. Why she didn’t get it, I have no idea. It shocked me so much.”
After a more than three-year lull in executions, Indonesia started putting death row inmates before the firing squad again last August with the execution of an Indian national on Aug. 5, followed by the execution of two Thai nationals on Oct. 1. All three were executed on drug-related charges. While the number of executions is still less than some of Indonesia’s Asian neighbors, the fact that executions have been historically so rare in Indonesian history, together with the sharp rise in those being sentenced to death, especially on drug charges, has alarmed human rights activists and legal experts. “Amnesty International is concerned that these recent developments reflect an increasing willingness by the authorities to use the death penalty to address crime, in particular drug-trafficking,” the London-based group said in a recent statement. “The organization is alarmed at official statements that further executions will be carried out in the near future,” it said. “This would constitute a setback for human rights in Indonesia.”
The last time an execution was carried out before last August was when two men were executed in May 2001 for murder, and before that no executions had been carried out for six years, according to Amnesty. But in the past few years, an increasing number of death sentences have been handed down, especially for foreign nationals convicted of drug trafficking. Recent estimates show that out of at least 54 people now on death row, at least 27 have been sentenced to death since 2000, and 30 face death for drug-related charges. At least 22 of those facing death are foreigners, 20 of whom have been put on death row for drugs. Less than 20 death row inmates were convicted of murder. At least seven other people, all of whom thought to be foreigners, are expected to face a firing squad in the coming months, as their requests to the president for clemency were also rejected, according to rights groups and statements by the attorney general’s office.
Rights groups say Indonesia is even bucking a trend among countries using the death penalty by increasing the number of crimes in which the penalty can be applied, instead of decreasing them. In addition to murder, crimes threatening state security, the assassination of state leaders and drug-related crimes, crimes against humanity and terrorism, were also added to the list of crimes punishable by death in the last four years. At least five people have already been sentenced to death on charges related to terrorist attacks in Jakarta and Bali. There have also been calls for the government to add illegal logging and corruption to crimes punishable by death.
At the time of Indonesia’s national election last July, some political analysts suspected former President Megawati Sukarnoputri’s rejection of clemency, which paved the way for the resumption of executions, was a final bid to garner popularity. Many Indonesians support the death penalty, especially for foreign drug traffickers. “She may have done it to divert attention, but most Indonesians are also for that (the death penalty),” said Dr. Ivan Hadar, executive secretary of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development (INFID). “Religious groups, the military, they all support it.”
But after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono easily swept the election on promises of broad democratic reforms, some analysts suspect his reasons may also include wanting to show new international allies like the US that he’s not afraid to get tough on terrorism and drugs. They also believe he is pandering to powerful domestic constituents such as the military and hard-line Islamic groups who have supported the death penalty and strong action against social vices. “In the 80s and 90s I campaigned to abolish the death penalty and I was accused of being anti-Islamic because I didn’t support Islamic law,” said Katjasungkana. She is an MP for the National Awakening Party (PKB), an Islamic party founded by Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid, former president of Indonesia and head of the country’s largest Muslim organization, Nahdatul Ulama (NU).
