INDONESIA has announced plans to execute six people this weekend and in an ominous statement has said that two Australians on death row will be executed once both have had their clemency rejected.
So far Myuran Sukumaran’s clemency plea has been rejected but Andrew Chan has yet to receive any answer.
Last night the Indonesian Attorney-General HM Prasetyo said that six death row inmates will face firing squads on Sunday. Five of them are foreigners — from Brazil, Nigeria, Malawi, Vietnam and Holland and one is from Indonesia.
The Brazilian, Marco Archer Cardoso Moerira, has already been moved and isolated at a prison on Nusa Kambangan Island, off the coast of Central Java. It is believed the others have as well and late yesterday an Islamic preacher and a priest went to the prison to spend time with the condemned. Five of those to die are men and one is a woman, a female on drugs charges.
Five of the executions will take place simultaneously on Nusa Kambangan and the sixth person will be executed at Boyalali in Central Java.
It will be the first Indonesian executions conducted in more than a year and has sent terror throughout the prison populations, especially Kerobokan prison where 33-year-old Sukumaran and fellow convicted drug runner Andrew Chan are held.
Asked at a press conference in Jakarta specifically about Sukumaran’s case, Mr Prasetyo said that his clemency had been rejected.
“We are still waiting one other person that the clemency is yet to be issued for, Andrew Chan. When a crime is committed by more than one person, the execution will be conducted simultaneously ... When the clemency has been rejected, we will start to make plans to conduct the execution of them,” Mr Prasetyo said.
Sukumaran learned last week that his last chance at beating the firing squad had been denied when he was delivered a letter, signed by Indonesian President Joko Widodo, denying him clemency.
The letter was dated December 30 and was one of about a dozen presidential decrees signed by President Widodo, rejecting clemency pleas for drug and murder prisoners on death row.
The decision was a massive blow for Sukumaran and fellow Bali Nine member Andrew Chan, who for years have worked to rehabilitate themselves in the hope that it would bring them mercy and win them clemency.
Chan has applied for clemency but has not yet received an answer from the President.
After learning that his clemency had been denied, Sukumaran told News Corp Australia, through a friend, that living under the shadow of death was destroying him and his family but he vowed his spirit would not be broken.
“We have been living under the shadow of death for so long and it’s killing my family. It’s eating slowly. It's a miserable way to live. I feel completely lost about this decision and really don’t know.
“But I won’t let them break my spirit. I will keep doing what is right and at the end of the day when I stand before judgment I will be judged on who I am and what I’ve done.
“Me and Andrew lead a push for rehabilitation within this jail and changed the prison from within and they want to execute us? It doesn’t make sense.
“I know what I did was wrong. I am trying to make up for it. I live every day trying. I’ve pushed more than anyone to set up programs until the guards got sick of me asking.
“In the world of all the incarcerated people on drugs offences not one has worked harder than me to rehabilitate not just me but as many people around me. “
And his family in Sydney have been left devastated and bewildered, questioning the injustice of His mother, Raji, told News Corp in an exclusive interview that she is haunted by nightmares that she will not get to hold or hug her son one last time if he is executed.
And Mrs Sukumaran begged the Australian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to try to save her son’s life.
There are 64 drug convicts on death row in Indonesia and the President recently announced a new hard line approach — their clemency would be denied and they will all be executed.
President Widodo said drugs were crippling the youth of his country.
Bali Nine: Andrew Chan, Myuran Sukumaran to be executed together
It still sends shivers down my spine when I try think about how they must feel everyday with the news is that they are on the list to be executed this year.