Indonesia must abolish the death penalty

William Schabas, Jakarta

At the recent conference on capital punishment organized by the European Union and the Philosophy Department of the University of Indonesia, the attorney general provided an astonishing statistic: From independence until 2003, a total of only 15 people have been executed in accordance with Indonesian law.

By comparison, countries like the United States, China, Iraq, Iran and Vietnam each execute more than that number in a single year. Even most European countries have executed more than 15 people since 1945, and they are much smaller than Indonesia, although Europe has now virtually universally abolished the practice.

The historic reluctance of Indonesia actually to impose the death penalty must say something fundamentally positive about the country's culture and values, and above all about the importance its people place on the sanctity of human life.

It is, accordingly, rather disturbing that Indonesia seems to be coming under the spell of its neighbors, like Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam, who now regularly resort to capital punishment, particularly in the context of the so-called war on drugs.

In his remarks, the attorney general sought to defend capital punishment because of its alleged deterrent effect. But scientific studies have shown, again and again, that the death penalty offers no deterrent value whatsoever that is in any way superior to that of a lengthy term of imprisonment.

Criminals, including drug pushers, are deterred by the probability of getting caught, and not by variations in degree of what are by any standards severe penalties. Better investigation and better policing, not firing squads, are the way to deal with drug traffickers.

In the United States, where the death penalty debate is at its most sophisticated, those in favor have long ago dropped the deterrence argument. They understand that it is desperately flawed.

Instead, they rely on retribution, that is, the idea that someone who has committed a crime should pay the price irrespective of any benefits for society, for the victim or for the offender. That Indonesia has only executed a handful of criminals in half a century shows just how far is this approach from the hearts of Indonesians.

Some try to argue that Islamic law mandates capital punishment. Religious authorities seem to suggest the death penalty as a mandatory sanction for huddud crimes, which consist of adultery, apostasy and robbery. But nobody is realistically suggesting that such strictures be followed in contemporary societies.

For all other offenses, there is nothing mandatory with respect to the death penalty in Islamic law. The matter is left to the good judgment of modern, civil society. Indeed, the fundamental devotion to the sanctity of human life that underpins Islam would seem to militate in favor of restriction and abolition of the death penalty.

Since 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed that everyone shall have the right to life, the use of capital punishment has declined constantly. While in the 1940s most countries, including most of Europe, used the death penalty, today a majority of states have abandoned the practice.

Only 62 states still retain capital punishment, compared with 132 in which it has either been abolished or has fallen into more or less permanent disuse. Approximately three states each year abolish capital punishment. At this rate, there will be universal abolition within about two decades.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, now accepted by nearly 100 countries, prohibits the death penalty even for the most serious crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Indonesia had a strong claim to membership within this progressive and humanitarian legal tradition, that is, until recently, when in August of this year it revived the archaic and barbaric practice of state-sanctioned murder.

Indonesia is in a shrinking minority of states that have not yet ratified the principal international human rights treaty, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. While this treaty does not require abolition of capital punishment as a precondition, states cannot impose the death penalty except for "the most serious crimes". Although murder is undoubtedly in this category, the same cannot be said of drug trafficking.

Neighbors of Indonesia are setting themselves very much on the outside of an evolving consensus in the international community. Indonesia should resist being sucked into their hysterical campaigns about drugs and violent crime.

The path toward democracy and development necessarily requires the adoption of liberal and enlightened approaches to criminal justice. Indonesia's traditional disdain for capital punishment should lead it toward full abolition, and not in an opposite and retrograde direction.

The writer is director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights.