Self-inflicted wounds
Indonesia
has been rightly promoting its many positives.
It’s the third
largest democracy with Asia’s freest media; it’s the globe’s most moderate
Muslim nation and ASEAN’s economic powerhouse.
The biggest
archipelago is a resource-rich environment open for business and tourism. It’s inviting the world and her husband to
pack their bags, jump a Garuda and head for Wonderful Indonesia. As the ads say - ‘know it, love it’.
What’s not to like?
Only a
cruel and illogical approach to the drug problem by maintaining the death
penalty – with authorities checking carbines and cable ties for the next round
anytime soon.
Indonesia’s
stubborn refusal to discard this primitive and ineffective practice – now being
proposed for rape - is corroding all the splendid qualities which make the
17,000 plus islands and their multi-ethnic peoples a delight.
Why does
the government allow twisted thinking to dash down all the exciting images it
has been building over the years? Why continue to drive on the wrong side of
history when most have switched to the other lane?
Only 37 nations still have judicial murder on
their statutes and exercise the law.
Apart from
Indonesia the key culprits are China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan and
Saudi Arabia plus several rogue states. Does
an otherwise progressive and reformed Indonesia happily stand in this company
of brutes?
A further
50 countries still have the law though haven’t used it for the past decade. Six
retain it only for mass killings.
Like the
Dutch beheader’s sword now hanging idle in Jakarta’s Kota Tua, the gallows, stakes, electric chairs and chopping blocks
from 102 nations now rust and rot in museums - examples of how their ignorant
forebears behaved before they elevated
human rights above all else.
Every day President
Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo faces a mountain of compelling issues, including repairing
the nation’s infrastructure, boosting the economy, calming inter-faith tensions
and eradicating poverty.
Despite the
workload he’s found time to back the death penalty, arguing that it’s necessary
to curb drug trafficking. So far 14 peddlers of illegal
addictives have been executed under his 18 month watch.
During
the ten-year rule of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, only one of the
19 victims had been condemned for drug trafficking. The others were murderers.
Last
year’s clutch included men from the Philippines, France, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil,
Indonesia and two Australians who had reformed during their decade in
detention.
The killings led to
widespread condemnation. Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands withdrew their
ambassadors. This is the diplomatic equivalent of publicly
walking out of your neighbor’s house because you find their behavior repellent.
Inside Indonesia, Komnas HAM
(the National Commission on Human Rights) wants capital punishment
abolished. So do ten other NGOs that
have written to Luhut Panjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Police, Law and
Security Affairs asking for ‘a moratorium on executions as a first step
towards abolition of the death penalty’.
Last month President Jokowi
told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that shooting traffickers was necessary
because up to 50 citizens died every day from drug abuse.
The figures come from a 2008
study by Universitas Indonesia and Badan Narkotika Nasional (BNN
– the National Narcotics Agency).
Academic researchers have labelled the findings ‘ambiguous’, inaccurate’
and ‘over simplistic’.
Even if the statistics are
accurate, an annual total of 18,250 deaths is about four per cent of the World
Health Organization’s estimate of smoking-related fatalities.
Using the President’s logic
then Philip Morris, the largest trafficker of addictive substances in
Indonesia, should be tied to a stake and shot to shreds. As the British businessman died in 1873,
directors of the American company could be executed instead.
Indonesia will win the World
Cup before this happens, even though it’s the logical extension to the
President’s reasoning. Apart from an international outcry it would cause a stampede
of investors. The economy would
collapse, as it did when Soekarno nationalised Western businesses in 1958.
President Jokowi has also
argued that ‘shock therapy’ will curb the drug menace. Curiously the threat of death, even a painful
and prolonged sentence through metastatic lung cancer doesn’t change behavior. So
why should a quick 5.56 mm bullet dishearten?
Every time one of Indonesia’s
60 million nicotine addicts pulls out a fag they’re confronted by a fume-wreathed
skull and the slogan Merokok Membunuhmu (Smoking Kills You). Yet still they smoke.
Drug traffickers are indisputably
evil. Traders in jail are daily reminders of tough penalties. The facts show
the present policy is not a deterrent but a distraction.
The collateral damage caused
is extreme.
Those gleefully announcing
the killings to come don’t do the foul deeds themselves. They’re distant from
the macabre prison rituals. They don’t see
the ripped flesh, hear the death rattles before dawn, smell the vomit, sweat
the nightmare.
They don’t pass their
remaining lives forever recalling they’ve helped slaughter defenceless beings
in cold blood, the worst thing anyone can do to another human.
All involved in the vile process
are corrupted. So is the reputation of a fine nation, crippled by a flawed
ideology that has no place in a moral universe.
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(First published in The Jakarta Post 26 May 2016)
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