Govt asked to review death sentences

Ahmad Junaidi, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

University of Indonesia's center for women and gender studies has urged the government to review death sentences handed to six women for drug trafficking.

"The women are victims. They were deceived by their husbands or boyfriends," the center's chairwoman, Sulistyowati Irianto, said when presenting a study of the women's cases.

Sulistyowati said the district courts never considered the six women's bad experiences caused by their partner's before reaching their verdicts.

She said the Jakarta High Court earlier commuted the death sentence of one of the defendants, identified only as EYS, to a life sentence, considering that EYS was deceived by her boyfriend.

"But the Supreme Court recently overturned the decision and sentenced her to death," Sulistyowati said, adding that the death sentence would not solve the problem of drug trafficking.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri earlier rejected her appeal and upheld the Supreme Court verdict.

Four of the six women were Indonesians: EYS, MUT, NRI, and PRN while the remaining two were foreigners, identified only as BKA and NMS.

EYS testified that she was deceived by her boyfriend, an African, identified as W, who claimed to have a shop in the Tanah Abang market in Central Jakarta.

W asked EYS to deliver some money to his friend, identified only as B, in Bangkok in April, 2000.

Without the woman's knowledge, B changed EYS' bag with a bag containing heroin before she returned from Bangkok to Jakarta. She was then arrested upon arriving in Indonesia from Bangkok.

The other three Indonesian women were also deceived by their boyfriends and husbands, all of them are foreigners, while the two foreign women also had similar experiences.

Besides the six women, the center's researchers also interviewed two other women, identified as SKN, a Myanmar national and KHN, a Thai, who were sentenced to 20 years in jail and 15 years in jail respectively for drug trafficking.

"The women were also deceived by their partners to smuggle heroin here," the center's researcher Firliana Purwanti said.

Firliana said the courts only provided English interpreters, instead of interpreters of their own languages, during their trials.

"Their English was very poor. They could only say yes or no during the trial," she said.