The Nigerians that were executed on Friday
Three Nigerians and one local convicted of drug trafficking were on Friday executed by Indonesia.
It was gathered that the three Nigerians and an Indonesian man were
shot by firing squad during a thunderstorm shortly after midnight on
Nusakambangan Island in Central Java, as the government ignored
international calls for clemency and pushed ahead with what it considers
a war on drugs.
While speaking on Wednesday, the attorney general said that the
country would go ahead to execute 14 prisoners, including citizens of
India, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe, this weekend.
An official said on Friday the planned executions would go ahead “in stages” but declined to give a timeframe.
Security was stepped up at the Indonesian embassy in Nigerian
capital Abuja on Thursday as protesters gathered to urge Indonesia to
halt the executions. Indian and Pakistani officials said they were
making last-minute efforts to save their citizens.
“We considered several factors and decided that for now four death row inmates would be executed,” Noor Rachmad, an official at the attorney general’s office, told reporters shortly after Friday’s executions.
Rights activists and governments have called on Indonesia to
abolish the death penalty as it has become another tool for mass murder.
However, President Joko Widodo of Indonesia has refused to heed to
the advice as he said drugs pose as serious a threat as terrorism in
what is one of Southeast Asia’s biggest markets for narcotics.
The death penalty is widely accepted by the Indonesian public, but
police on Thursday had to break up a protest outside the prison by
members of a migrant workers group who called for mercy for an
Indonesian woman who was scheduled to be executed.
The United Nations and European Union had urged the executions be halted.
“Such death sentences are unlawful and tantamount to an
arbitrary execution as they are undertaken in contravention of
Indonesia’s international human rights obligations,” the U.N. said in a statement on Thursday.
Amnesty International called the executions “a deplorable act that
violates international and Indonesian law” and pleaded that the other
death sentences not be carried out.
“The injustice already done cannot be reversed, but there is still hope that it won’t be compounded,” the rights group’s regional director, Rafendi Djamin, said.
Around 152 people remain on death row in the country, including
convicted drug traffickers from the Philippines, France and Britain.
Authorities plan to execute 16 prisoners this year and more than double
that number in 2017.
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