Death penalty politically motivated: Campaigners

Death penalty politically motivated: Campaigners

Tiarma Siboro and Abdul Khalik, Jakarta

The policy of upholding the death sentence for drug traffickers
is politically motivated in a bid to defend the corrupt legal
system that failed to stop trafficking in the first place, human
rights campaigners say.

Munir, a cofounder of the National Commission on Missing
Persons and Victims of Violence (Kontras), accused the government
of exploiting "someone's life" to woo support from people already
suffering due to drugs.

"Instead of being aimed to deter criminals, the government's
decision to impose the death penalty is motivated by political
interests as it chose the political momentum as 'the right time'
to uphold the sentences," Munir told a press conference here on
Tuesday.

Munir also criticized presidential candidates for promising to
the impose the death penalty on convicted corruptors.

Similarly, Rachland Nasidik of human rights watchdog Imparsial
urged the government to review the death penalty by adopting the
legal system of countries that imposed cumulative sentences.

He and Munir said the death penalty was against the basic
human right to life.

Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association (PBHI)
director Hendardi and noted legal expert Todung Mulya Lubis
earlier voiced opposition to the death penalty.

There was no empirical data supporting the idea that countries
applying the death sentence manage to lower their criminal rates
compared to those that don't have the death sentence, they said.

They added that the maximum sentence should be life
imprisonment.

At least 11 drug traffickers are on death row, mostly
foreigners including Indian national Ayodhya Prasadh Chaubey,
after President Megawati Soekarnoputri rejected their pleas for
clemency.

Attorney General M.A. Rahman said on Monday that the Medan
Prosecutor's Office was coordinating with police to soon execute
Chaubey, 65.

Rahman said the Indian government wrote to his office asking
that Chaubey's life be spared, and claimed that he was too old to
face a firing squad.

The Indian Embassy confirmed on Tuesday that it had repeatedly
asked the Indonesian authorities to reconsider Chaubey's
sentence.

The execution of Chaubey should not be carried out before his
co-accused, two Thai drug dealers, receive legally binding
verdicts, the embassy said in a statement.

"It would appear to be in the interest of equal justice that
no sentence is carried out against Mr. Chaubey till a final
decision is reached on the petitions of the co-accused," it said.

The embassy said drug offenses such as that committed by
Chaubey did not carry the death penalty under Indian law.

"While the death penalty remains on the statute books in
India, under a ruling of the Indian Supreme Court it is applied
only in the rarest of rare cases shocking the conscience of
society," it argued.

However, based on Indonesian Law No. 22/1997 on narcotics and
Law No. 5/1997 on psychotropic substances, a drug offense carries
a maximum punishment of death.

Among the many death-row drug convicts, only one drug offender
has been executed in 10 years, namely Malaysian Chan Ting Tong,
alias Steven Chong, was shot by a 12-man firing squad.