CILACAP, Indonesia – Indonesia on Wednesday, April 29 executed 7 foreign drug convicts including two Australians by firing squad despite a storm of international anger, reports said, but a Filipina was spared at the 11th hour.
Authorities put the 7 plus a local man to death after midnight on a high-security prison island in central Indonesia.
The 8 convicts – two Australians, one from Brazil and 4 from Africa, as well as the Indonesian — were executed in Nusakambangan Island, Metro TV and the Jakarta Post reported.
Filipino protesters stage a demonstration as they wait for the imminent execution of a Filipino mother, in front of the Indonesian embassy in Makati city, south of Manila, Philippines, 28 April 2015. Photo by Francis R. Malasig / EPA
However the Filipina, Mary Jane Veloso, was spared after someone suspected of recruiting her and tricking her into carrying drugs to Indonesia turned herself in to authorities in the Philippines.
“Miracles do come true,” her mother Celia told a Philippine radio station, adding that her daughter’s two young boys were awake and yelling “Yes, yes mama will live”.
The Philippine government also expressed delight at the reprieve for Veloso, whose case attracted emotive appeals for mercy from boxing superstar Manny Pacquiao among others.
“The Lord has answered our prayers,” Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Charles Jose said, as activists holding a vigil in front of the Indonesian embassy in Manila broke into cheers and hugged each other.
In contrast, there was shock and anger in Australia over the executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” heroin-trafficking gang, whose case has severely strained ties between Australia and Indonesia.
Steven Ciobo, parliamentary secretary to Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, tweeted that “there are few greater displays of abuse of State power and regressive thinking than the death penalty”.
In Indonesian executions, convicts are led to clearings just after midnight, tied to posts and then given the option of kneeling, standing or sitting before being executed by 12-man firing squads.
President Joko Widodo has been a vocal supporter of the death penalty for drug traffickers, claiming Indonesia is facing an emergency due to rising narcotics use.
He has turned a deaf ear to appeals from the international community led by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon.
There was swift condemnation of the executions, with Rupert Abbott, Amnesty International’s research director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, labeling them “utterly reprehensible.”
“They were carried out with complete disregard for internationally recognized safeguards on the use of the death penalty,” he said.
Anguished visits
In the hours before the convicts were put to death, there was a flurry of activity as ambulances carried coffins to the island, and relatives made final anguished visits to their loved ones.
Relatives of Chan and Sukumaran wailed in grief as they headed to the island, and one relative collapsed amid a huge scrum of journalists. RAPPLER.COM
