UN Human Rights Council Urges Indonesia to Abolish Death Sentence

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta- 

The United Nations Human Rights Council recently recommended the Indonesian government to remove death penalty from Indonesia’s Criminal Code. 

Indonesia’s representative for the council in Geneva Hasa Kleib said that the recommendation has become a part of the 225 Human Rights recommendations through the council’s universal periodic review.

“Some want death penalty to be abolished, others want a moratorium,” Hasan said on Thursday, May 18, 2017.

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna H. Laoly and Foreign Affairs Minister Retno L.P. Marsudi led the delegation in the discussion of Indonesia’s human rights reports. 

Indonesia, according to Hasan, received 150 recommendations, in addition to 75 recommendations that will need to be consulted. Hasan explained that the recommendation to remove death penalty from Indonesia’s legal system will be hard to realize. 

Mualiman Abdi, director general of human rights at the Law and Human Rights Ministry said that the article regarding death penalty will be taken out from the substantive legal punishment and will become an alternative that should always be carefully implemented.

Mualiman also questioned about current death row inmates once the revised regulation took effect. He added that the Ministry will review the enforcement of the new bill and its effect on death row inmates.

ARKHELAUS W.