New hope emerges for Indonesia death row inmates

The death penalty in Indonesia will not be abolished but condemned inmates could avoid the firing squad if they show enough remorse for their crimes while awaiting execution, a government official said May 18.

May 19, 2016

JAKARTA: The death penalty in Indonesia will not be abolished but condemned inmates could avoid the firing squad if they show enough remorse for their crimes while awaiting execution, a government official said May 18.

The government is to propose handing death row inmates a 10-year probationary period, according to Enny Nurbaningsih, an official of the ministry of law and human rights.

"It is hoped they will show enough remorse so that their sentence can be reduced to life imprisonment," she told a May 18 seminar in Jakarta titled: "Death Penalty in a Democratic Nation."

"The emphasis is that the death penalty is only the last resort," she said.

Indonesian pro-life groups in cooperation with the Catholic bishops' conference and the Catholic University of Atma Jaya organized the seminar in which many speakers called for the abolition of the death penalty.

According to Asas Tigor Nainggolan, coordinator of the pro-life groups, the government was preparing to execute 14 death row inmates by firing squad this year, although the dates of the executions and the names of those to be executed had yet to be confirmed.

Last year at least 14 people, many of them foreigners, were executed. Most were condemned to death for drug trafficking in line with a policy laid down by Indonesian President Joko Widodo to execute all drug traffickers.

Two people who escaped execution last year were French national Sergei Areski Atlaoui and Mary Jane Veloso of the Philippines. They were reprieved, as they had to undergo legal processes in their respective countries.

Some at the seminar saw the possible government proposal to lay down a 10-year probation period as a positive step, but many called for the complete abolition of the death penalty, calling capital punishment a product of an imperfect and unjust legal system.

Laws are not perfect and judges can make mistakes, Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo of Jakarta, told participants.

"Don't be too confident. When you think that laws are perfect, that is the beginning of injustice," the archbishop said.

"Trials can be misleading," added the president of the Indonesian bishops' conference.

Jesuit Father Franz Magnis Suseno, a philosophy professor at Jakarta's Dryarkara School of Philosophy, said the death penalty should be abolished because it is an instinct for revenge.

The problem is that once it is done it is irrevocable. “We have to realize that judges can make mistakes, too," the German-born priest said.

According to Father Suseno, death penalty has not proven to have a deterrent effect.--ucannews.com