MAY 2 — After the final 12 shots were fired, after the last of the death row inmates were executed by a firing squad, after their bodies are either buried or repatriated back to their countries of origin, the Central Java town of Cilacap, once teeming with relatives, diplomats, security officials and journalists, became a sleepy town once more while hundreds of kilometres away in Jakarta, a president ponders his next move.
Eight convicted drug traffickers, all but one foreigners, were killed shortly after midnight on Wednesday. Some say they murdered. The culprits: the often flawed and corrupt Indonesian legal system, and a president who refused to listen to countless pleas for mercy, outcries and condemnations. This president is a villain in the eyes of the international community, but a hero and a patriot back home.
In a bid to justify the execution, President Joko Widodo, or Jokowi as he is popularly known, said repeatedly that Indonesia was facing a “drug emergency.” No one in this country is disputing this fact. They have grown accustomed to news of drug raids and crackdowns as well as the countless times some drug-using youngsters get behind the wheel and run over and kill pedestrians and motorcyclists. But must it come at the expense of severing long-forged diplomatic ties with other countries? Or more importantly, cost eight lives and the lives of five other drug trafficking inmates (a sixth inmate was convicted of murder) whom Jokowi’s administration executed in January?
In a televised interview recently, a teary-eyed Jokowi claimed that 50 Indonesian youths die every day from drug overdose. If the goal is to decrease that number, then what good would taking the lives of 13 others, in fact the dozens of condemned drug offenders still awaiting execution, do?
Saving the lives of our future generation can be done simply by not penalising people who have fallen victim to drug abuse, incarcerating and putting them in jail where they will be exposed to new, sometimes more dangerous drugs.
Instead of executing inmates, Jokowi could focus on setting up new drug rehabilitation facilities or ensure the plan to offer treatment for drug addiction covered in our universal healthcare scheme is carried out fully. Or teaching people about the dangers of stigmatising and ostracising recovering drug addicts, a real problem in our society that keeps them from reintegrating into the community and as a consequence drags them back to their old habits. Or perhaps Jokowi could encourage parents to stop sending drug victims to religious schools instead of seeking professional help from trained physicians.
So much energy has been wasted trying to dampen international as well as domestic condemnation on the executions. With Jokowi pledging not to provide clemency for the other 50 drug offenders on death row, Indonesia could be wasting much more. The same energy could be used to forge ties with other countries to fight international drug trafficking syndicates and put the real masterminds to jail or ensure drug producers don’t get to launder their money in tax havens.
Another overused argument is that executing death row inmates is a way to uphold Indonesia’s legal supremacy, urging foreign countries to respect our law. If that’s the case, Jakarta too should not have deplored let alone protested when two Indonesian maids were beheaded in Saudi Arabia earlier in April.
And our so-called legal system is not exactly credible or just. When quizzed by an expat peer, I struggled to explain why Zainal Abidin, the lone Indonesian inmate executed on Wednesday, was given the death penalty for trafficking 50kg of marijuana, while drug kingpin Hengky Gunawan, found guilty of producing and trafficking hundreds of thousands of ecstasy pills, was allowed to live and continue operating his drug trafficking ring from behind bars. I faced the same struggle trying to explain why an elderly woman accused of stealing timber got six months in prison while a former central banker was sentenced to two years for siphoning Rp100 billion (RM28 million).
The lawyer for Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran said his clients were offered to have their sentences reduced to 20 years in exchange for bribes. The same claim was made by the wife of Nigerian Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise. Regardless whether the accusations are true, it is no secret that corruption is still rampant in Indonesia’s judiciary, as exemplified by the arrest of the country’s top judge for accepting bribes. That judge, Akil Mochtar, formerly chief justice of the Constitutional Court, is now serving life, not condemned to die like Chan and the others, despite destroying the credibility of an institution where people seek justice.
The extortion claims are currently being investigated by an independent body, which will be hard to verify now that the key witnesses, Chan, Sukumaran and Nwolise, are dead.
Indonesia’s court system is also criticised for prosecuting and later giving the death penalty to Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte despite his 20-year history battling schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Police psychiatrists, however, insisted that he was fit for trial although their evaluation was never shared with Gularte’s lawyers. Meanwhile, Zainal had to wait ten years before his appeal was heard, while Jamiu Owolabi Abashin, another Nigerian, did not even have a lawyer when he appealed his death sentence.
Mary Jane Veloso, a 30-year-old maid from the Philippines who was duped into carrying three kilograms of heroin from Malaysia, was unable to understand what was taking place during her 2011 trial. Veloso, who understands only a few words of English, was assisted by a young interpreter whose English was just as bad as hers.
Veloso’s life was spared at the last minute after her recruiter, a woman named Cristina Sergio, surrendered herself to Philippine authorities. There is no doubt that Veloso’s testimony played a critical role in unravelling the truth. If indeed Sergio was scheming with an international drug ring to hide heroin in her suitcase, as Veloso had claimed, Veloso’s testimony could lead to the arrest of many, potentially saving many other Filipinas from suffering the same fate as Veloso and keeping billions of rupiah worth of drugs from ever reaching Indonesia and elsewhere.
But President Jokowi decided to reward this effort by saying that Veloso’s execution was merely delayed and not cancelled, a remark that would deter future drug offenders from cooperating with Indonesian law enforcers. Surely Veloso deserves more.
Eight lives were lost this week that will never be regained. Gone too were the lives of countless Indonesians who fall victim to drugs. There are lessons that can be learned from these terrible tragedies, both in our fight against drugs as well as to have a more credible legal system. Let’s hope this administration learns them before it makes another rash decision to end more lives based on lies and fallacies.
The task of righting the wrong now lies in the hands of the living. — Jakarta Globe
* Nivell Rayda is a Jakarta Globe editor and author specialising in legal and human rights.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online.
