Pronouncement of death sentence sparks controversy
JAKARTA (JP): The recent pronouncement of another death sentence has revived the controversy of the sentence, especially among human rights advocates.
A former director general of correctional institutions at the Ministry of Justice, Baharuddin Lopa, now the secretary-general of the National Commission on Human Rights, is a known advocate of preserving the death sentence.
He said yesterday at the commission's office that the country still needed the death sentence.
"Ideally, no one should get the death sentence, but should we let a sadistic killer live?" he asked.
In the 1980s, Baharuddin was among those who staunchly voiced support for the death sentence, opposed to prominent human rights advocates and lawyers grouped in the Hapus Hukuman Mati (ban capital punishment) group.
"The death sentence protects people. It aims to prevent other people repeating (the same crime). So a death sentence is educational in the sense that it teaches people not to the same thing.
"If we don't apply the death sentence, people can do the same thing again, knowing that a previous crime did not earn the death sentence.
"We must observe the methods of those who kill some 40 women or kill more than one person," Baharuddin said, referring to a recent shaman's confession in Medan, North Sumatra, that he killed 43 women to improve his supernatural powers.
Harnoko Dewantono, alias Oki, 32, was given the death sentence Tuesday after the Central Jakarta District Court found him guilty of killing an Indian businessman, a female friend and his younger brother. His lawyers have appealed the sentence.
Last week in a trial against a homeless man, Siswanto alias Robot Gedek, the prosecutor demanded the death penalty, saying the defendant was guilty of sexually abusing and killing six street boys between 11 to 15 years old.
The executive director of the Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association, Hendardi, said because Indonesia had ratified the UN's Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, "this increasingly supports the cause for wiping out the death sentence".
He said the death sentence was also "inconsistent with the spirit of the correction system applied here for more than three decades (since 1964)."
The system implies that a criminal has a chance to correct himself, Hendardi said.
"The perspective that a death sentence is aimed to prevent a repetition of crimes ... is not supported by facts of reduced quality or quantity in crimes."
Besides Oki and Robot, Philipus, who was found guilty of murdering a woman and her three children in East Jakarta, was handed down the death sentence last year.
A military tribunal sentenced Lt. Sanurip to death last month for shooting dead 10 officers and six civilians at the Timika airport on April 15 last year.
In Surabaya, a woman called Astini was sentenced to death in October for killing three neighbors between 1993 to 1995.
Political prisoners on death row for their involvement in the banned Indonesian Communist Party include Marsudi, Asep Suryaman and Isnanto. (dph/anr)