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uman rights activists have urged the government to cancel any plans regarding a fourth round of executions of death row convicts, amid uncertainty about when they might take place.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s administration has so far conducted three rounds of executions, which were carried out despite outcry from both domestic and international rights groups.

Attorney General Prasetyo previously said a fourth round had not been scheduled for this year yet as the government was seeking international support for its bid to become a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Moreover, the government was also taking into account economic and political developments, he said hinting that the executions might be delayed.

However, Prasetyo said the death row inmates would still be executed in order to eradicate extraordinary crimes such as drug trafficking.

“[The executions] are still on. It’s just the timing that hasn’t been decided yet,” he said as quoted by kompas.com over the weekend.

Six death row inmates were executed in January 2015. The second round took place in April 2015, attracting global media attention as several of the executed convicts were foreigners whose deaths caused tension between Indonesia and the convicts’ respective home countries. The latest round was in July 2016 when four of 14 inmates were executed in a high-security prison in Cilacap, Central Java.

The Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) criticized Prasetyo’s stance, which would create great uncertainty among death row inmates.

“It’s the same as the government torturing the death row inmates, as they will keep wondering who will be on the next list to be executed. It’s a very bad precedent, it’s state-sponsored torture,” ASEAN HRWG program manager Daniel Awigra told The Jakarta Post over the weekend.

Furthermore, there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding the third round of executions last year including clemency requests for two of the executed convicts.

The Attorney General’s Office also allegedly violated the law on execution procedures, which stipulates that executions cannot be carried out until 72 hours after a prosecutor has notified the condemned prisoners.

“But that regulation was not followed as the inmates only received notification less than 72 hours [before execution]. So there needs to be answers first on why the rules were violated,” Daniel said.

The HRWG pushed for more transparency in the execution decisions and urged the Attorney General to carry out a public evaluation.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has also condemned the executions. It has urged the government to immediately end the practice, which is deemed unjust and incompatible with human rights, as the UN opposes the use of capital punishment in all circumstances, the High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein Zeid said last year. He also questioned the entire legal process for the death row convicts, saying that it lacked transparency and did not comply with principles of fair trial, including the right to appeal.

The Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) has also called on the government not to deny death row convicts their rights, executive director Supriyadi Widodo Eddyono said. The government must consider the Constitutional Court ruling last year that revoked time restrictions on convicts filing for clemency to the President. In the Clemency Law it had been stipulated that convicts could only file for clemency a maximum of one year after there was a final legal verdict.

A request for clemency was an attempt to seek forgiveness or sentence remission, Supriyadi said, slamming Prasetyo’s previous statements that clemency requests were merely a bid to stall for time.

“Clemency is an attempt by convicts to stay alive. Clemency can be seen as an instrument to end executions in Indonesia,” he said.