The local death row population has grown in the past year but no executions have been carried out in a decade, leaving inmates facing a cruel incertitude, a key rights group said.
The South-East Asian country has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, including the death penalty for traffickers.
Death sentences are still pronounced for crimes including murder and violent robbery, but Indonesia last carried out an execution – by firing squad – in 2016.
KontraS rights group, which released its report on capital punishment on Friday, said death row convicts suffer prolonged trauma, never knowing if or when they will be killed.
“The government... must commit to eliminating all forms of cruel and inhumane punishment practices, particularly by protecting its citizens from death sentences and executions,” the group said.
Indonesia had 639 inmates on death row in April, including nine women, the KontraS report said days after a botched execution in the United States revived debate about the death penalty.
More than 400 of Indonesia’s death row inmates were held for drug offences, said the report.
Under a new criminal code that entered into force this year, the death penalty must be the punishment of “last resort”.
No executions should take place within 10 years of sentencing, after which a prisoner can have their sentence commuted to life imprisonment for good behaviour.
The government’s own statistics showed 680 death row convicts as of Friday, up from 612 in 2025.
The office of UN rights chief Volker Turk said this month there were “multiple reasons why the death penalty should be abolished”, pointing to the failed execution of murderer Christa Pike in the southern US state of Tennessee. — AFP
