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Whatsapp A woman kisses a picture of Indonesian President Joko Widodo during the parade at his inauguration ceremony held in Jakarta

While Indonesia does everything in its power to ensure its citizens aren’t executed in other countries, it is executing an increasing number of foreign nationals. Matt O’Neil takes a look at these seemingly contradictory positions.

Although Indonesia fights tooth and nail to save its citizens from execution abroad, it seems determined to execute convicted Australian heroin smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Tobias Basuki from Jakarta’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies agrees his country has a ‘double standard’ when it comes to capital punishment.

‘It undermines the moral legitimacy of the Indonesian government to appeal and to fight for the lives of our own citizens,’ he told Phillip Adams on Late Night Live.

This administration has committed itself publicly to using what would essentially be mass killings—58 people dead by the end of the year on some reports—as a response to popular anxiety over drugs.

Saving Indonesians from execution overseas has become a hot political issue in Jakarta.

This is partly because many of those condemned to death row in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are housemaids who have been charged with murdering their abusive employers. Such cases have attracted considerable interest and sympathy back home.

However, there are also Indonesian drug smugglers facing capital punishment overseas, and Indonesia’s recently elected president Joko Widodo has been working hard to save them from execution as well.

As part of his efforts, he’s directed further resources to an already well-funded legal taskforce, which was established in 2011 by former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

This advocacy unit has been successful in achieving clemency for ‘as many as 60’ overseas nationals, according to Professor Tim Lindsey from Melbourne University’s Centre for Indonesian Law, Islam, and Society.

According to Lindsey, President Widodo is currently torn between two ‘contradictory populist positions’.

‘On the one hand is this perception—which is questionable—about a drugs crisis in Indonesia. His response is “no mercy for drug offenders.”

‘On the other hand, there is the very popular position that Indonesia will rescue its citizens who face execution overseas.’

Lindsey told LNL that Australia also shows ‘double standards’ when it comes to advocating against the use of the death penalty.

‘Both John Howard and Kevin Rudd at different times indicated support for the execution of the Bali bombers, and I think John Howard in fact called it appropriate at one stage,’ he said.

‘Indonesian officials quite early on in efforts to spare Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran’s execution threw this back in the face of Australians.

‘This is a theme running through the whole of this debate: we have double standards.

‘We don’t mind Indonesia executing the Bali bombers, but we object to it for our citizens, and now Indonesia is in the same position.’

Managing the discourse

For many Australians, Indonesia’s conception of justice is difficult to understand: how can two seemingly rehabilitated drug traffickers be killed, while criminals involved in high level terrorist operations like the 2002 Bali bombings walk free?

Tobias Basuki told LNL that this distinction between executing people on drug charges and commuting the sentences of terrorists can be partly explained through public perception.

That perception is that Indonesia’s drug situation is one of the country’s ‘worst problems, next to corruption’.

Terrorism, while seen as a serious issue, is not at the top of the list.

According to Basuki, there is also a spiritual component.

‘The drug problem is more easily vilified from a religious perspective,’ he said.

‘Terrorism is [also] vilified, but a lot of the radicals who are not terrorists manage the discourse in saying that the terrorists are more of our own, while the drug problem is more of a satanic problem.’

Overrating Jokowi’s progressive credentials

President Widodo’s professed commitment to human rights during the 2014 election campaign instilled high hopes among Australian observers about the future of his presidency.

However, his uncompromising position on the death penalty, his harsh crackdown on foreign fishing vessels, and his bold decision to scrap Indonesia’s fuel subsidies have surprised many in Australia and abroad.

According to Basuki, Jokowi is a progressive leader, but also a pragmatic politician whose support for the death penalty makes sense for his own ‘narrowly defined goals’.

‘I think a lot of distant observers, or the western media portrayed him on a higher pedestal than he actually is,’ said Basuki.

‘Jokowi is not swayed by public opinion as his predecessor was, but he is always looking at something that he can measure concretely.

‘Any appeals for based on just grand normative ideas of human rights would probably not be effective in getting through to him.’

Read more: Is it ethical to boycott Bali?

President Widodo came to power on a strong anti-narcotics platform, and he has since claimed that his country is in the midst of a drug emergency.

He has frequently said that illicit narcotics kill an estimated 40-50 young Indonesians each day.

According to Basuki, however, these claims are based on ‘shoddy statistics’.

Lindsey agreed: ‘The data on which those estimates are based comes from an Indonesian Narcotics Agency report that’s very out of date, and the information in it is drawn from a range of surveys with estimates of forward growth that really are based on nothing. They’re pulled out of thin air.’

Be that as it may, the perception amongst Indonesians of a ‘rapidly escalating’ drugs crisis remains.

‘This administration has committed itself publicly to using what would essentially be mass killings—58 people dead by the end of the year on some reports—as a response to popular anxiety over drugs,’ said Lindsey.

Indonesia’s international standing

Jakarta’s tough stance on the death penalty has exposed Indonesia to a chorus of condemnation, and not just from Australia.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon weighed in recently, calling for a stay on the use of capital punishment.

The Netherlands and Brazil both recently withdrew their ambassadors from Indonesia in protest over the executions of their citizens.

Britain, too, has a citizen on death row Indonesia, and Lindsey told LNL that there is concern amongst Jakarta’s foreign policy elite that London could ‘influence the EU’ to disengage with Indonesia if the killing goes ahead.

‘I think some senior Indonesians in the elite—and that’s what matters in terms of decision-making—now feel that Indonesia’s international standing is at stake,’ he said.

Basuki, himself a staunch opponent of the death penalty, believes Indonesian abolitionists need to find ways of connecting their arguments to ‘concrete and measurable goals within Jokowi’s programs’.

A boycott of Bali by Australians might be a good place to start, according to Basuki.

‘The boycott by Australians themselves is, I believe, one thing that’s concrete enough in terms of tourism,’ he said.

‘One thing that vice president Yusuf Kallah, in regards to this execution, said “we are going to go through with it because we have to go with our own national interests.”

‘It needs to be reframed: the greater national interest of Indonesia [is] to stop capital punishment.’

Indonesian death penalty Listen to Late Night Live for more on the legal and political complexities of the sentencing of Chan and Sukumaran.

From razor-sharp analysis of current events to the hottest debates in politics, science, philosophy and culture, Late Night Live puts you firmly in the big picture.



