JAKARTA: Indonesia brushed aside last-minute appeals by foreign leaders and executed by firing squad six people, including five foreigners, convicted of drug trafficking, sending a message that the new government will not compromise its tough approach to narcotics.

Four men from Brazil, Malawi, Nigeria and the Netherlands and an Indonesian woman were shot to death simultaneously in pairs just after midnight Saturday, several kilometers from a high security prison on Nusa Kambangan island. The other woman from Vietnam was executed in Boyolali, according to Attorney General Office’s spokesman Tony Spontana. Both areas are in Central Java province.

Their bodies were brought from the island by ambulances early Sunday either for burial or cremation, as requested by relatives and representatives of their embassies.

President Joko Widodo in December rejected their clemency requests. He also refused a last-minute appeal by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and the Dutch government to spare their countrymen — Brazilian Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, 53, and Ang Kiem Soe, 52, who was born in Papua but whose nationality is Dutch.

The six were the first people executed under new President Joko Widodo.

Indonesia has tough anti-drugs laws and Widodo, who took office in October, has disappointed rights activists by voicing support for capital punishment despite his image as a reformist.

He defended the executions, saying drugs ruin lives.

Amnesty International said the first executions under the new president, who took office in November, were “a retrograde step” for human rights.