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Church, activists appeal for end to drug executions

Local Catholic woman, 10 foreigners named on list of prisoners set to face Indonesian firing squad
Church, activists appeal for end to drug executions

Members of the Community of Sant’Egidio join activists in a rally held to protest the death penalty. (Photo by Katharina R. Lestari)

 

Published: December 26, 2016 04:48 AM GMT

(UCAN Series: Best of 2016)

Church leaders and rights groups have appealed to Indonesian President Joko Widodo not to execute a third batch of drug convicts that includes an Indonesian Catholic woman.

"We’ve written to the president asking him to have a re-think about the executions," Father Paulus Christian Siswantoko, executive secretary of the bishops' Commission for Justice, Peace and Pastoral Care for Migrant-Itinerant People said July 27.

The appeal follows the recent announcement that prison authorities were ready to execute 14 more drug convicts on the notorious Nusakambangan Island, including 10 foreigners, following a hiatus of more than a year.

Indonesia carried out two rounds of executions last year, putting to death six people in January and eight in April.

"Those first and second rounds of executions resulted in nothing, there was no significant deterrent effect. In fact, drug distribution is more widespread. Even prisoners can control the trade from jails," Father Siswantoko said.

Execution must not be seen as the only solution in the fight against drug trafficking and that mitigating circumstances must also be taken into account, he said.

One of the four Indonesians on the latest list is a Catholic woman, Merri Utami, who was caught with 1.1 kilograms of heroin at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport near Jakarta, in 2003 and who was moved to Nusakambangan Island on July 24.

She told police she had been given a bag in Nepal to give to her Canadian boyfriend who had left for Jakarta a few days earlier on urgent business. She said she didn’t know the bag contained drugs.

Supporters say Utami's case bears similarities with that of convicted Filipino drug mule Mary Jane Veloso who was spared from the firing squad last year so that she could testify against her alleged recruiters in proceedings in the Philippines.

Father Siswantoko said the 42-year-old woman from Central Java province, came from a poor background and was an unwitting victim.

"The court only saw her as a courier of heroin and didn’t find out why she had it. This is what we must criticise. The state needs to clearly see the circumstances which made her do what she did," he said.

 

Protests from activists

The National Commission on Violence against Women said it has also appealed in writing to Widodo to halt the executions, and also saying mitigating circumstances should be taken into account.

"We told the president about how drug syndicates set poor women up, and urged him to improve measures to prevent women becoming victims of human trafficking," commission chairwoman Azriana, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, said on July 26 referring to the Utami case.

Opponents of the death penalty, including members of Community of Sant’Egidio and Migrant Care, gathered outside the presidential palace on July 26 to protest against the looming executions.

Declaring the judicial system flawed and riddled with corruption they said many of those sentenced to death in Indonesia are done so unjustly.

Wahyu Susilo, a policy analyst at Migrant Care, claimed the judicial system "was filled with mafia."

"Some prosecutors and legal enforcement officers were arrested recently because of their involvement in this judicial mafia. The judicial process in Indonesia fails to provide fair trials and, as a result, these flawed trials produce the death penalty," he told ucanews.com.

Meanwhile, international rights group Amnesty International called on Indonesian authorities to abolish the death penalty once and for all.

"By continuing to execute, the Indonesian authorities are not only going against their international law obligations, but are also setting the country against the global trend towards abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment," it said in a July 25 statement.

Published July 28, 2016

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