Indonesia's government says the country is
experiencing a 'drugs emergency.' Others say domestic political questions are
at work.
Indonesia
executed four people, including three foreigners, by firing squad on Friday in
the latest round of executions for drug offenses carried out by the government.
The
executions came just past midnight in a prison on the island of Nusakambangan,
off the coast of Java Island. Two of the men were Nigerian citizens and a third
was Senegalese, reported CNN.
Indonesian
authorities had earlier said that 14 death row inmates would face the firing
squad on Friday, but the remaining 10 appear to have been granted at least a
temporary reprieve. Deputy attorney general Noor Rachmad said that the decision
about whether the others would face the death penalty would later be made
public, according to local media reports.
"Right
now, we do not know whether the remaining death row inmates have appealed for
clemency," Mr. Rachmad told Indonesia's Antara News. "Based on the
result of our study with the existing team, only four were to be executed for
the time being."
Indonesia
is one of more than two dozen countries in which drug traffickers can get the
death penalty, according to Harm Reduction International, an nongovernmental
organization that advises the United Nations on drug and public-health policy.
And it’s among a handful of countries that apply it most frequently, along with
China and southeast Asian neighbors like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore.
Last
year, Indonesian firing squads executed 13 people for drug crimes, nearly all
of whom were foreigners. And 29 new death sentences were handed down for drug-related
offenses, too – compared with 17 for murder, according to Amnesty
International.
Dan
Slater, a political scientist at the University of Chicago who specializes in
Southeast Asia, said in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor that
the latest executions were “sadly routine” in the staunchly conservative
society.
“This is
part of a general ethos in Indonesia that to be considered a member of the
community, you have to be a decent person,” he said. “It’s not unusual in the
region, and it’s not a new phenomenon.”
But
drug-crime executions have grown increasingly common under President Joko
Widodo, who entered office in October 2014 with a reputation as an political
outsider and anti-corruption reformer. In the 15 years prior to Mr. Widodo’s
term, noted the New Yorker in 2015, only seven people were killed for drug
offenses.
Widodo’s
government says the measure helps deter trafficking, though human rights
advocates say there’s no evidence of its effectiveness. As he has struggled to
establish sway over Indonesia’s vastly diverse political coalitions, wrote the
magazine, he may be pursuing executions of foreign drug traffickers in order to
assert his credibility.
“It’s
really popular with the public,” says Jeremy Menchik, a professor at Boston
University’s Pardee School of Global Studies, who has written extensively about
religion and politics in Indonesia.
“There’s
been a moral panic for a couple of years now about drug addiction,” he told the
Monitor, adding that fears of an epidemic are not born out by statistics. “My
sense is, he can be seen as responding to that sense of panic and urgency by
implementing these draconian policies.”
Both the
United Nations and the European Union issued statements denouncing the
execution of the four men. And diplomatic blowback from past executions has
seen countries like Australia and the Netherlands call home their ambassadors.
“Indonesia
is a passionately nationalistic country,” said Dr. Slater, “and people don’t
like external interference ... [anti-death penalty] activists are more likely
to get more traction if it’s an Indonesian on death row than if it’s a
foreigner.”
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