Indonesia puts foreigners to death for drug trafficking

JAKARTA, Indonesia – Indonesia executed by firing squad five foreigners and an Indonesian woman convicted on drug trafficking charges despite appeals to spare them.

The government defended the action as necessary to combat the rising drug trade.

Four men from Brazil, Malawi, Nigeria and the Netherlands and the Indonesian woman were shot to death just after midnight Saturday, several miles from a high-security prison on Nusakambangan Island. Another woman, from Vietnam, was executed in Boyolali, according to Attorney General Office’s spokesman Tony Spontana. Both areas are in Central Java province.

Their bodies were taken from the island by ambulances early today either for burial or cremation, as requested by relatives and representatives of their embassies.

President Joko Widodo in December rejected their clemency requests. He also refused a last-minute appeal by 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.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders said in a statement late Saturday 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.”

Amnesty International said the first executions under the new president, who took office in November, were “a retrograde step” for human rights.

Indonesia’s Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo has said there is no excuse for drug dealers and, “hopefully, this will have a deterrent effect.”

Widodo has said he would not grant clemency to 64 drug convicts on death row.

“What we do is merely aimed at protecting our nation from the danger of drugs,” Prasetyo told reporters Thursday. He said figures from the National Anti-Narcotic Agency showed 40 to 50 people die each day from drugs in Indonesia.