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.