Indonesia to keep death penalty as punishment for drug crimes
Foreign minister defends capital punishment as “part of Indonesian law” and at the same time, says the country is trying to promote its less conservative and more tolerant brand of Islam around the world
Indonesia will continue to apply the death penalty to convicted drug traffickers despite international opposition fanned by the executions of 12 foreign convicts last year, the country’s foreign minister said.
The continuing use of the law was justified by a “drug emergency” in Southeast Asia’s largest nation, Retno Marsudi said in an interview in Jakarta.
“That’s why we have to enforce our law,” Marsudi said in her office, which has a large map of the world in one corner and a globe in the other. “It’s really, really, really worrying. It is not against a country. It’s against crimes being done by those guys.”
The executions of seven foreigners in April 2015 – among them Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran – prompted Australia to temporarily withdraw its ambassador. President Joko Widodo, who had been in office six months at the time, refused numerous appeals for clemency. Since April, there have been no executions.
“It’s still part of Indonesian law,” Marsudi said, when asked whether the country was prepared to keep executing drug convicts. “As long as it is there, then of course it is there.”