Against international appeal, the Indonesian government has publicly carried out the execution of a Nigerian, Brazilian and the Netherlands nationals, after a court in that country convicted them of drug related offences.
Brazil and the Netherlands have recalled their ambassadors from Indonesia and expressed fury on Sunday after Jakarta defied their pleas and executed two of their citizens along with four other drug offenders.
The Chairman of Nigeria’s anti-drug agency, the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Ahmadu Giade, in a chat with our Correspondent, said he sympathizes with the family of the Nigerian killed in that country. He added that, the Nigerian anti-graft agency has been warning young Nigerians to desist from drug trafficking. “We have been telling them that in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, in short majority of the Asian countries have death penalty for drug traffickers caught in those countries.”
Giade, said there was little or nothing anybody or Nigeria as a country can do about her citizens caught with hard drugs in countries like Indonesia, because such persons would have to face the local law of that country. “May their souls rest in peace,” he stated. Reports had it that among convicts to face firing squad are citizens of Vietnam, Malawi, Nigeria and Indonesia. The six were the first people executed under new President Joko Widodo.
All the prisoners, who had been sentenced to death between 2000 and 2011, were executed shortly after midnight, the attorney general’s office said.
A 53-year-old Brazilian, who was caught with drugs stashed in the frame of his paraglider at Jakarta airport, and the 62-year-old Dutchman were executed on Nusakambangan Island, home to a high-security prison, off the main island of Java.
A Nigerian, Daniel Enemuo; Namaona Denis from Malawi; and an Indonesian woman, Rani Andriani, were executed at the same location. The sixth convict, Vietnamese woman Tran Thi Bich Hanh, was executed in the Boyolali district in central Java.
They were all caught attempting to smuggle narcotics apart from the Dutchman, who was sentenced to death for operating a huge factory producing the drug ecstasy.
All had their appeals to the president for clemency rejected last month.
Jakarta had an unofficial moratorium on executions for several years from 2008 but resumed capital punishment again in 2013. There were no executions last year.
Widodo, known as Jokowi, has taken a particularly hard line towards people on death row for narcotics offences, insisting they will not receive a presidential pardon since Indonesia is facing an “emergency” over drug use.
Following Sunday’s executions, the number of people on death row for drugs-related offences stood at 60, around half of whom are foreigners, said a spokesman for the national narcotics agency.
Indonesia has tough anti-drugs laws and Widodo, who took office in October, has disappointed rights activists by voicing support for capital punishment despite his image as a reformist.
Widodo on Sunday defended the death penalty in a Facebook post.
“The war against the drug mafia should not be half-hearted measures, because drugs have really ruined the good life of the drug users and their families,” he said.
“There is no happiness in life to be gained from drug abuse. The country must be present and fight with drug syndicates head-on,” he added.
Widodo’s tough stance has sparked concern for other foreigners sentenced to death, particularly two Australians who were part of the “Bali Nine” group caught trying to smuggle heroin out of Indonesia in 2005.
Also on death row is British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford. She was sentenced to death in 2013 after being caught trying to smuggle cocaine into Bali.
