While many Indonesian people agree with corruptors and drug smugglers being handed the death penalty as punishment, human rights advocates note that it will not bring the deterrent effect both lawmakers and the public may expect.
Dylan Amirio, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | World | Mon, November 10 2014, 8:42 PM
While many Indonesian people agree with corruptors and drug smugglers being handed the death penalty as punishment, human rights advocates note that it will not bring the deterrent effect both lawmakers and the public may expect.
Speaking at the third Jakarta Human Rights Dialogue on Monday, the Indonesian representative to the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR), Rafendi Djamin, explained that a large part of the Indonesian public still believed that the death penalty would deter potential criminals from engaging in corruption or drug smuggling.
He said the fact that this opinion was supported by government authorities, such as the police and the National Narcotics Agency (BNN), was the reason why Indonesia’s stance on the death penalty remained vague.
“The deterrent effect of the death penalty cannot be totally proven. Even if you sentence a corruptor to death, the problem of corruption won’t go away. The solution lies in the firmness of a life sentence: give the corruptors no power to influence how their sentence will be carried out,” Rafendi told The Jakarta Post on Monday.
Indonesia resumed executions of convicts in 2013, five years after the last death penalty was carried out in 2008 on the three Bali bombers who were responsible for the deadly explosions on the island in 2002.
The executions in 2013 included Nigerian drug smuggler Adam Wilson in March, three convicted murders in Cilacap prison in May and a Pakistani drug smuggler in November, all of which drew criticism from human rights activists on Indonesia’s inconsistent stance on the death penalty.
Rafendi commented that the resumption of the death penalty could be seen as an attempt by the government to project an image of firmness in upholding the law, an attempt that he says is “dangerous” due to the indirect use of fear.
European Union’s special representative for human rights, Stavros Lambrinidis, said the reason why almost all countries in Europe have chosen to abolish the death penalty was due to a self-examination of their national dignity that stemmed from the atrocities of World War II.
Stavros noted that the abolition of the death penalty was not a cultural issue different from the norms of a country, but was rather a regional issue, in that human rights were considered and agreed upon in a region. (ebf)(++++)