INDONESIA has extended the reprieve from execution of overseas Filipino worker Mary Jane Veloso and other inmates on death row because a third round of executions would aggravate Jakarta’s slowing economy, according to a Foreign Affairs official.
Foreign Affairs spokesperson Charles Jose said they are still verifying the Jakarta Post report that Indonesian Attorney-General M. Prasetyo announced that upcoming executions will be delayed due to weakness in the Indonesia economy.
Prasetyo said the AGO would not carry out a third round of executions of inmates until the country got out of the current economic slowdown, adding that executions at this time could trigger an international outcry that could derail President Joko Widodo’s campaign to fix the economy.
“The Attorney-General’s Office is currently helping the government in prioritizing the economy,” the Jakarta Post quoted Prasetyo as saying.
This year, the AGO conducted two rounds of executions, the first involving six convicts in January and the second another eight in April.
The executions sparked condemnations from domestic and international human rights campaigners as well as risked Indonesia’s diplomatic relationships with the respective countries of origin of the foreign inmates.
Earlier in September, the AGO sent a budget proposal for the execution of 14 foreign and domestic drug convicts to the House of Representatives Commission III overseeing legal affairs, but the plan was put on hold after the country entered a period of economic slowdown.
Prasetyo said the third round of executions would likely be conducted next year, but he did not give details regarding the plan.
The Attorney-General said the AGO was working to help the economic recovery, including by setting up a team that would help local government officials make budget decisions.
Veloso had been on Indonesia’s death row in Yogyakarta. In April 2010, she was arrested after she was found carrying heroin in her luggage, although she insisted that it was planted by a drug syndicate.
Her execution was deferred in a stunning, last-minute stay order last April 29, after several other foreigners on death row for drugs cases had been put to death.
Her lawyer Edre Olalia of the National Union of People’s Lawyers was gratified by the report.
“If confirmed, that report is certainly welcome not only for Mary Jane Veloso but for all; and we hope it leads to a permanent abolition in time, as we have serious objections and questions about its effect and purpose in deterring crime,” Olalia said.
Veloso’s family had filed charges of qualified human trafficking against her alleged recruiters, Maria Cristin Sergio and Julius Lacanilao, as well as another respondent known as “Ike”.
Veloso was supposed to have been executed on April 26, but was temporarily spared after a woman who allegedly recruited her to act as a drug courier gave herself up to the police in the Philippines.
Indonesia’s Attorney-General’s Office said it would include Veloso in the next round of executions after the legal process in her own country was finished, the Jakarta Post reported.