“We believe that the death penalty is a shortcut for a country that is too lazy to seek and systematically solve the root cause of a crime, because the death penalty only resolves the life of the perpetrator, but does not solve the root cause of the crime,” KontraS states in its activity report on ‘20 Years of Reform: Crime & Punishment in Human Rights Discourse in Indonesia” conference.

In the activity report, KontraS provides an update on a National Conference titled ‘20 Years of Reform: Crime & Punishment in Human Rights Discourse in Indonesia’ held on May 8, 2018 by the Commission for the Disappeared and Victims of Violence (KontraS) with LBH Masyarakat and IMPARSIAL as members of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) in Indonesia, in collaboration with the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) and Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM).

The report gives information on the conference’s encompassing discussions on the issues of death penalty in Indonesia which includes the discussions on the irreversible effects of death penalty to the death-row inmates and their family, on the absolution of the punishments and on how advocacy for the elimination of death penalty from the Penal Code Bill has been ignored by the Government and Parliament because the punishment was still deemed to create deterrent effect. The report also mentions the talk on how there was a need for simultaneous movement of various lines to encourage the death penalty to be limited or abolished and the need to look at the facts that the crime rates had decreased in countries that have abolished death penalty.

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For a PDF version of this report, click here.