Indonesia brushed aside last-minute appeals by foreign leaders and executed by firing squad six people convicted of drug trafficking, including five foreigners, sending a message that the new government will not compromise its tough approach to narcotics.
Four men from Brazil, Malawi, Nigeria and the Netherlands and an Indonesian woman were shot to death simultaneously in pairs just after midnight Saturday, several kilometres from a high-security prison on Nusakambangan Island. The other, a woman from Vietnam, was executed in Boyolali, according to the Attorney General Office’s spokesman, Tony Spontana. Both areas are in the Central Java province.
Their bodies were brought from the Island by ambulances early Sunday either for burial or cremation, as requested by relatives and representatives of their embassies.
The Indonesian President, Joko Widodo, in December rejected their clemency requests. He also refused a last-minute appeal by the Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, and the Dutch government to spare their countrymen – Brazilian Marco Archer Cardoso Moreira, 53, and Ang Kiem Soe, 52, who was born in Papua but whose nationality is Dutch.
But the Nigerian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Aminu Wali, has summoned the Indonesian Ambassador to protest the execution of two Nigerians, Solomon Okafor, (Alias Namaona Denils) and Daniels Enemuo, (Alias Diarrassoube Mamadou) by the Indonesian government.
A statement on Sunday in Abuja by the Director, Public Communication Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ogbole Amedu-Ode, said the executions were carried out despite persistent pleas for clemency made by the Federal Government, including the National Assembly.
“The executions, had taken place against the grain of the excellent relations that subsist between Nigeria and Indonesia,” the statement noted.
The Federal Government expressed its sympathy and condolences to the families of the deceased and also appealed to Nigerians to desist from drug trafficking which attracts the capital punishment in Indonesia and in many other countries around the world.
The Federal Government said it would continue to engage the Indonesian authorities to negotiate and conclude a Prisoner Transfer Agreement that might enable other convicted Nigerians to return home to serve their prison terms.
It said, “Thus, the Foreign Minister has summoned the Indonesian Ambassador to register Nigeria’s protest. Meanwhile, it strongly appeals, once again, to the Indonesian authorities to exercise clemency for other 12 Nigerians on the death row in the country.”
Also, the Dutch Foreign Minister, Bert Koenders, said in a statement late Saturday that he had temporarily recalled the country’s ambassador to Indonesia and summoned Indonesia’s representative in The Hague to protest Ang’s execution.
He said it was carried out despite King Willem-Alexander and Prime Minister Mark Rutte personally contacting Widodo.
He called the execution “a cruel and inhumane punishment … an unacceptable denial of human dignity and integrity.”
Rousseff said she was outraged and appalled by the execution, according to a government statement.
The execution “creates a stain, a shadow in the bilateral relationship,” said Marco Aurelio Garcia, the Brazilian president’s Foreign Affairs’ Special Adviser. “There was no sensitivity on the part of the Indonesian government.”
Amnesty International said the first executions under Indonesia’s new president, who took office in November, were “a retrograde step” for human rights.
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