Abbott polarizes pro-death penalty debate in Indonesia

By Ross B. Taylor AM

 

In 1984 the then Labor Government abolished the death penalty in WA. 

It was a brave and visionary decision given public opinion, based on research conducted by the Roy Morgan Group, showed around 60% of the population either in favour or undecided about retaining executions for serious crimes. 

Thirty years later, all Australian states have abolished the death penalty and that it should never play a part of a modern democracy.  

Ironically, estimates suggest that there is still some 36% of the population still in favour (or undecided) about such a penalty,  highlighting that major reforms such as executing convicted criminals for serious offences, takes a long time, and it is also a slow and extended process to bring public opinion around to what ‘is right and decent’. 

Indonesia has been under democratic government for only 17 years, since the fall of the former dictator President Suharto. In recent years Indonesia’s first democratically elected president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono gradually and carefully started a process that would have lead to the abolition of the death penalty in his country. 

The recent election of a new president, Joko Widodo, has seen Indonesia temporarily (in my view) revert to a more hard-line approach to executing criminals in line with public opinion. This slow change in public attitudes is not dissimilar to that in WA since 1984. 

Notwithstanding President Joko’s tough stance on drug smuggling, and his decision to embrace the death penalty for such crimes, Indonesia will at some stage continue the process of moving to abolish what is, in a modern democracy, a barbaric law. 

As part of that process of shifting public opinion – a process that took Australia almost thirty years to complete -  a national ‘conversation’ is needed; a discussion about Indonesia’s progress as a young democracy and its role and conduct in the world as a nation of over 245 million people. 

This much needed 'national conversation' about the death penalty in Indonesia has regrettably been set-back following our prime minister's recent clumsy comments about the tsunami aid. 

Twitter usage in Indonesia rates number three in the world and with 95 million people under 25 years of age, the twitter sphere has now got a new 'hot topic'; that being the Australian prime minister's comments about aid to the people of Aceh over ten years ago and how this aid was – as perceived by Indonesians - conditional upon the clemency of two drug smugglers in 2015. 

As a result of the PM’s comments, the debate over the death penalty within Indonesia has now been galvanised support of this inappropriate law as the Koin Unuk Australia (Coin for Australia) Twitter campaign swamps social media throughout the nation, with everyday Indonesians being asked to donate a small coin to raise enough funds to give Tony Abbott back all the (conditional) aid money donated by then compassionate Australians. 

Officially, whilst Indonesia is publically 'unhappy' with our PM's comments, privately Indonesian officials are seething at what they see as the Australian prime minister’s arrogance in threatening Indonesia, making it 'very unhelpful for Australia in the future’.  

More importantly however, is their private frustration that the death penalty debate, that is so needed in Indonesia, has been hijacked by an Australian Prime Minister who appears unable to distinguish his own comments from those we would expect form a shock-jock in Melbourne.

 

Ross Taylor is the president of the Perth-based Indonesia Institute (Inc)

 

February 2015