May 5
INDONESIA:
Abolition of death penalty just a proposal, Indonesian attorney general says in
report
Indonesia will not scrap the death penalty any time soon despite a proposal by
some of its lawmakers to abolish it during a review of the country's criminal
code, Indonesia's attorney general said.
According to a Jakarta Post report, Attorney General M Prasetyo said it "is
still far too early to discuss" lifting the death penalty in Indonesia.
"There is a proposal, but we haven't discussed it yet," Prasetyo also said.
International pressure on Indonesia to scrap the death penalty has been
mounting after it executed 8 convicts, including foreign nationals, last month.
It has executed 14 convicts since January.
Mary Jane Veloso, the Filipino sentenced to death over a drug case, was spared
from execution at the last minute after the illegal recruiter who allegedly
tricked her into transporting 2.6 kilograms of heroin turned herself over to
police in Nueva Ecija province on April 28.
Hours before she was scheduled to be executed, President Benigno Aquino III
talked to Indonesia's foreign minister about the need to turn Veloso into a
witness against the drug syndicate that she says tricked her into becoming a
drug mule.
A Malacanang spokesperson said Monday that the Philippine government is already
working with Indonesia to build a case against the drug syndicate.
Despite that, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said on Monday that the
government will not press Indonesia to allow Veloso to come back to the
Philippines to testify against her alleged recruiter Christine Pasadilla, alias
Kristina Sergio, and others.
(source: GMA news)
*************
Transnational campaign against death penalty in Indonesia began with political
prisoners ---- While recent executions by Indonesia have captured the world's
attention, this year is also the 30th anniversary of the execution of political
prisoners that first created global concern.
Vannessa Hearman has received funding from the Australian Academy of Humanities
and the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA). She is Southeast Asia
regional councillor for the ASAA.
World attention has focused on Indonesia's recent executions. But this year
also marks the 30th anniversary of the execution of 3 Indonesian political
prisoners.
In 1985, the Suharto regime executed Joko Untung, Gatot Lestario and Rustomo.
With little warning to their families, they were taken in the middle of the
night to a field in Pamekasan on the island of Madura, off the north coast of
East Java, and shot.
The men had been in prison since 1968 and 1969. Their crime was to try to
resurrect the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) in the southern parts of East
Java.
Opposition to the death penalty during the Suharto era was primarily part of
the campaign against the authoritarian regime in Indonesia. This campaign
united Indonesian and international organisations and involved ordinary
citizens in countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the
Netherlands.
The story of Gatot Lestario
Lestario was a high school teacher and an organiser of the PKI in East Java
until 1965. The PKI was the 3rd-largest communist party in the world at that
time.
In September 1965, a group calling itself the 30th of September Movement
kidnapped and killed seven high-ranking army officers. This was painted as a
coup attempt against President Sukarno. The army leadership, led by Major
General Suharto, blamed it on the PKI.
Half a million leftists were killed in the 1965-66 pogroms. Many were
imprisoned, mostly without trial, for varying lengths of time. A small number
of leftists categorised as those "most involved" in the 30th of September
Movement, including communist leaders, were executed. Suharto became president
in 1968 and led Indonesia for the next 30 years.
Lestario and a few dozen surviving PKI cadres managed to survive in hiding. In
1967, they retreated to construct a base in South Blitar to resist the Suharto
regime.
The military destroyed the base by September 1968 and thousands were killed,
arrested and displaced. The surviving militants were jailed, some in Jakarta
and the rest, including Lestario, in East Java. He was tried and sentenced to
death in 1976.
International campaign for Lestario
While on death row, Lestario, who was adept in Dutch and English in addition to
Indonesian and Javanese languages, began writing to penfriends who were
involved in the Quakers and Amnesty International. Lestario convinced his
penfriends to take up his case in their respective countries and in Indonesia.
1 of the founders of Amnesty International, Eric Baker was a Quaker and he
urged the Quakers to support Amnesty's anti-torture campaign launched in 1973.
The Quakers set up the Campaign Against Torture and the Prisoner Befriending
Scheme as a result. The scheme encouraged Quaker congregations to write to
political prisoners around the world.
In 1983, Doreen Brown, who lived in London, sent Lestario a Christmas card to
which he replied. Through his letters, Lestario was able to provide information
to Amnesty International and Tapol, an Indonesian human rights organisation
also based in London. Tapol was founded by former Indonesian political prisoner
Carmel Budiardjo in 1973.
Lestario described prison conditions and the situation of the 22 political
prisoners in Pamekasan. Despite being behind bars, Lestario worked with this
transnational network to improve the conditions of political prisoners and to
campaign for their release.
The Browns wrote and circulated 2 petitions, signed by hundreds of people,
addressed to the Indonesian government for the release of Lestario and his wife
Pudjiaswati. Lestario's clemency appeal to President Suharto was denied in
1984.
In the same year, after a brief moratorium on executions, leftist prisoners
began to be executed again, starting with Mohammad Munir. Munir was formerly a
trade union leader with the World Federation of Trade Unions and member of the
PKI Politburo.
Lestario expressed his concern to his penfriends about this worrying
development. He hoped that Amnesty could pressure the foreign minister, Mochtar
Kusumaatmadja, on his 1985 visit to London to commute the Indonesian death
sentences.
Despite his optimism, Lestario was shot in July 1985. His mother was able to
spend his last moments with him. But his wife, herself in prison in East Java,
and his children were not aware of his execution until days later.
In Westminster, England, the Browns organised a memorial meeting on October 2
1985 for the executed men. At the end of the meeting, people were asked to take
home a flower to press and dry to remember the men by.
One year on, they published a book of extracts from Lestario's letters, a
tribute to their friend, titled The Last Years of Gatot Lestario. Handwritten
then photocopied, hand-bound and stitched, the couple made 220 books and from
the proceeds they raised funds for political prisoners in Indonesia and their
families.
Campaign for abolition
The subversion law, upon which Lestario's execution was based, was repealed in
1998 when the Suharto regime ended. But the death penalty still stands for
other crimes.
The campaign against the death penalty today has been more difficult to
maintain and less visible, because in the past it was so intertwined with the
fight for democracy in Indonesia.
But a transnational campaign against the death penalty can be built today in
the footsteps of previous campaigns developed between Indonesians and the
international community.
(source: The Conversation)
*********************************
British grandmother prepares for execution in Indonesia
A British grandmother on death row in Indonesia is writing goodbye letters to
her family and believes she could be executed at any time, she wrote in an
article on Sunday.
Lindsay Sandiford, 58, said she was expecting to die shortly, after 7 foreign
drug convicts were executed last week, causing a storm of international
protest.
"My execution is imminent and I know I might die at any time now. I could be
taken tomorrow from my cell," Sandiford wrote in British newspaper the Mail on
Sunday.
"I have started to write goodbye letters to members of my family."
Sandiford, originally from Redcar in northeast England, wrote that she planned
to sing the cheery popular song "Magic Moments" when facing the firing squad.
"I won't wear a blindfold. It's not because I'm brave but because I don't want
to hide -- I want them to look at me when they shoot me."
She said her greatest sadness is that she may never meet her 2-year-old
granddaughter, who was born after her arrest.
Sandiford was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was
convicted of trafficking drugs.
Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated 1.6 million pounds ($2.4
million, 2.2 million euros) hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford's suitcase
when she arrived in Bali on a flight from Thailand in 2012.
Sandiford admitted the offences, but says that she agreed to carry the drugs
after a drug syndicate threatened to kill her son.
She described Andrew Chan, 31, 1 of 2 Australians killed by firing squad on
Wednesday for his role in a plan to smuggle heroin, as "one of the heroes of my
life".
The 2 had become close friends in prison, where Chan had spent a decade after
being arrested as 1 of the so-called "Bali 9" group of smugglers.
The execution of Chan, who became a Christian pastor in prison, and another
Australian Myuran Sukumaran, 34, cast a pall over relations between Australia
and Indonesia.
A mentally ill Brazilian man and 4 African men were also executed. A Filipina
single mother, Mary Jane Veloso, was granted a last-minute reprieve.
Sandiford's family have recently launched a fundraising drive to raise money to
lodge an appeal at the Indonesian Supreme Court, after the British government
refused to fund the legal fight.
If the challenge fails, Sandiford still has the option to appeal for clemency
from Indonesian President Joko Widodo.
Mercy pleas of the convicts executed on Wednesday had been rejected.
(source: Yahoo News)
*******************
Indonesians fighting to abolish the death penalty need our support
In all the sadness, sympathy and anger at the executions of Myuran Sukumaran?
and Andrew Chan and the others executed in Indonesia, we should acknowledge and
appreciate the efforts and work of the human rights advocates and NGOs in
Indonesia. They fought so hard to save their lives in recent months - and
continue to work for the abolition of the death penalty there so that no one
else is subjected to this cruel and inhuman punishment. Their efforts have
helped to so far spare the life of the young mother from the Philippines, Mary
Jane Veloso.
Their work may be unpopular and difficult in a country where there is still
wide support for executions. But it is through their work and efforts - in
changing public opinion, taking legal cases, lobbying politicians, and engaging
the UN that the death penalty will be abolished - that those convicted and
their families and loved ones will be spared the anguish and pain of
state-sanctioned murder. Australia should now be looking to the long term at
what can be done to support these individuals and organisations in Indonesia
and across the region in a shared mission of abolition.
It is worth remembering that work to abolish the death penalty also used to be
unpopular in Australia. Abolition of the death penalty in Indonesia will take
time, as it did in Australia.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop acknowledged the work of one of these Indonesian
NGOs - Migrant Care - in her speech to Parliament earlier this year. Anis
Hidayah? is a courageous woman who leads Migrant Care - which fights for the
lives of Indonesia's migrant workers on death row across the world and for
their rights as migrant workers. She argues from principle and pragmatism - the
lives of Indonesians on death row in Riyadh, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore are
more likely to be spared if Indonesia opposes the death penalty in all cases.
Rafendi Djamin?, who leads Indonesia's Human Rights Working Group and is
Indonesia's representative on the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human
Rights, also spoke out. Haris Azhar? who leads Kontras, an Indonesian human
rights NGO, issued an urgent ASEAN wide appeal to save the lives of Myuran and
Andrew and the others through an ASEAN-wide civil society network established
by another Indonesian human rights defender, Yuyun Wahyuningrum. They are among
many, but their work is made more difficult if the argument is made one between
Indonesia and Australia as countries. No country wants to be told what to do by
another country.
This is one of the values of internationally agreed human rights standards -
they reflect the values that every country has voluntarily signed up to -
acknowledgements of human dignity that transcend borders and draw from all
faiths. The standards are there, but they are breached by all governments. The
UN has appointed independent experts to monitor these breaches, to hold
governments accountable and to engage governments in dialogue, where
governments are willing to listen. If all governments treat these independent
officials with respect, whether they like what they say or not, then they can
be more effective.
There are individuals and organisations in both Australia and Indonesia who are
working, sometimes together, to ensure that their governments take principled
and consistent positions on all human rights - popular and unpopular.
It was only in 1989, during Amnesty International's last global campaign
against the death penalty that Australia finally removed the death penalty from
its books. The leaders of Australia took a positive, principled and united
stand. Then Australia took a leading role in global abolition of the death
penalty by leading on promoting the Second Optional Protocol on the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
It is worth remembering that work to abolish the death penalty also used to be
unpopular in Australia. Abolition of the death penalty in Indonesia will take
time, as it did in Australia. It requires action individual case by individual
case, it means persuading judges and politicians that taking life is wrong, and
persuading more of the public that it can never be right for the state to
coldly kill people in its custody. The movement toward abolition is being led
by Indonesians with a deep commitment to the value of human dignity, who see
the death penalty as a negation of these values. They are working with others
in Australia and internationally. They deserve our acknowledgement and support.
(source: Commentary: Patrick Earle is a visiting fellow at UNSW Law and the
executive director of the Diplomacy Training Program----The Age)
SOUTHEAST ASIA:
Narcotics, international law and the death penalty: The way forward
Australia can lead in calling for a regional moratorium on capital punishment
for narcotics offences, if not more generally.
The tragic execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and before that,
Nguyen Tuong Van in Singapore in December 2005, have highlighted the limited
avenues available to a government that seeks to avoid the unjust imposition of
the death penalty upon one of its citizens.
The events in Indonesia have also highlighted the arbitrary and capricious
nature of the application of the death penalty with last-minute reprieves for
Mary Jane Veloso and Serge Atlaoui being granted while Chan and Sukumaran were
executed when serious and fundamental questions remained over their sentencing
process.
The application of the death penalty in the Asia Pacific is frequently
inconsistent with international law. While international law does not
necessarily prohibit the death penalty in all cases, there are a number of
significant treaties and other international rules that expressly limit its
application. In particular, the imposition of capital punishment for drug
crimes is not permissible under international law to which Indonesia, and many
other Asia Pacific countries, are subject.
Indonesia is a party to the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights. The covenant was drafted in the recognition that, at the time of its
conclusion, the death penalty was not prohibited by international law but that
its application should be severely limited. It limits the application of the
death penalty to "the most serious crimes".
Although drug trafficking is clearly "a" serious crime, it cannot be
characterised as "the most serious crime". It does not inevitably lead to
lethal consequences. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has made clear
that only exceptional crimes may carry the death penalty, and the United
Nations Economic and Social Council has defined the relevant crimes to be those
which necessarily lead to lethal consequences as constituting a most serious
crime. Narcotics control treaties in force throughout the Asia Pacific refer to
lengthy imprisonment as the most appropriate punishment for drug crime.
In the case of Chan and Sukumaran, the fact that the drugs involved were to be
trafficked to Australia, and not within Indonesia, meant that no Indonesian
citizen faced any grave or lethal consequence as a result of their actions, and
constituted a powerful basis to object to the application of a penalty of
death.
The blanket rejection of clemency bids by President Joko Widodo without any
consideration of individual circumstances, the rush to arbitrary execution
while substantial and fundamental legal issues remained before Indonesian
courts and tribunals, and the determination to execute after 10 years of
imprisonment are additional reasons that Indonesia's conduct failed to comply
with its most basic international legal obligations.
Despite the clear inconsistencies between international law and Indonesia's
conduct, no international tribunal was able to rule on these matters. As
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has publicly stated, Australia unsuccessfully
sought Indonesia's agreement to resolve these international legal issues before
the International Court of Justice.
The lack of compulsory international dispute-settlement processes in these
cases renders it imperative that Australia now take a leadership role in
seeking a regional moratorium on the application of capital punishment for
narcotics offences, if not more generally.
Amnesty International, which has maintained a lengthy campaign against the
death penalty, has identified that well over half the countries in the world
have now abolished the death penalty entirely. Abolitionist countries in the
Asia Pacific now include Australia, Cambodia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands,
Mauritius, Micronesia, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Philippines, Samoa,
Seychelles, Solomon Islands, South Africa, East Timor, Tuvalu, and Vanuatu. Of
other countries in this region, Cook Islands, Fiji, Brunei Darussalam,
Maldives, Myanmar, Nauru, and Tonga have essentially abolished the death
penalty in all but the most exceptional cases.
That leaves a much smaller number of regional countries which retain the death
penalty, of which China is the most prominent. Alarmingly, Papua New Guinea is
actively considering reintroducing the death penalty.
A bipartisan consensus has emerged in recent days for Australia to do more to
abolish the death penalty. A good place to start is within our region. Efforts
must be directed at engagement through ASEAN and other regional fora. Our
politicians and diplomats must speak with one voice, and with consistency, on
the issue. Inconsistency limits Australia's ability to speak out on behalf of
Australians abroad by removing the most powerful tool in the diplomatic
armoury, Australia's consistent and implacable opposition to the death penalty.
The example of rehabilitation of Chan and Sukumaran and their ability to speak
to future generations of youth is something which Indonesia should today be
celebrating. Instead, it faces justified international condemnation, increased
friction with its neighbours and a much diminished place in the world
community. Whatever Widodo may think, that is not in Indonesia's national
interest.
The time has come for Australia to seek to exercise real regional leadership on
this issue and mount a sustained campaign for the abolition of the death
penalty. That will ensure an ongoing legacy for these two Australians executed
in Indonesia.
(source: Dr Christopher Ward (barrister and ANU College of Law Adjunct
Professor) and Professor Donald R. Rothwell (ANU College of Law) were advisers
on international law to Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran----Brisbane Times)
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