TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
It’s impossible for Indonesia to abolish death penalty: Expert
Change text size
Gift Premium Articles
to Anyone
Share the best of The Jakarta Post with friends, family, or colleagues. As a subscriber, you can gift 3 to 5 articles each month that anyone can read—no subscription needed!
Stay firm -- Criminal law expert Muladi (pictured) attends a recent discussion in Jakarta. He said it was unlikely for Indonesia to abolish the death penalty. (Tempo/File)
Criminal law expert Muladi has said it is unlikely for Indonesia to abolish capital punishment and remove it from its national laws.
The death penalty, he said, was in fact part of the Criminal Code (KUHP) Indonesia inherited from the Dutch colonial era. “It has existed in our system of law since long ago,” he said on Thursday.
Under the KUHP, he said, criminal sanctions were imposed with an aim to fulfill criminal law principles, namely “retribution,” in which the perpetrator must get a sanction equal to what he or she had done.
Capital punishment was also a legal penalty in Islam, a religion adopted by the majority of Indonesian people, he further said.
“Even if a referendum is held in this country, our citizens will be divided into two groups. Many people may vote in favor of the death penalty. Therefore, what we need to do now is to find middle ground to accommodate the aspirations of our people regarding this matter,” said Muladi, who heads a drafting team for the KUHP revision.
He said the current KUHP draft revision ruled out the death penalty from its list of primary sentences, as the punishment was imposed for parties committing extraordinary crimes only.
Muladi said the KUHP would also regulate the conditionality of capital punishment, in which any perpetrator sentenced to death would be given a ten-year probation with the hope that they could be rehabilitated.
If the government did not execute those convicts until their probation period expired, their punishment would decrease to a life sentence or 20 years in prison, he said. (ebf)
