The path to abolition leaves no room for contradiction
On 29 July 2016, in a remote part of Nusakambangan Island, fourteen people had prepared themselves to die. They had been reunited with their families, though they were provided less time together than what is stipulated in the law. The government had two teams in place: a team of trained police officers to perform the executions and a team of doctors to confirm the results. At dawn, the Indonesian government executed four people sparing the remaining ten. Those ten people lived another day, uncertain if or when they would repeat the process and be summoned for their execution— all over again.
Ten years have passed since then without an execution in Indonesia. Based on the United Nations’ standard, countries that still have death penalty provisions but have not executed anyone for a period of ten years or have made international commitments through official moratoriums belong to abolitionist-de-facto (ADF) countries.
Indonesia’s change of status from a retentionist country (those that retain the use of death penalty for ordinary crimes), to an ADF country is a significant milestone. Many abolitionist activists have successfully used this milestone to forge paths to true abolition, as happened in European countries in the 1990s. In Indonesia, however, the shift to de facto abolitionism has been less straightforward.
An Indonesian way
In the first few years of Joko Widodo's (Jokowi's) government, between January 2015 and July 2016, three rounds of executions were carried out and a total of 18 people killed, 15 of whom were foreign nationals. Amid the fallout from both national and international protests, the then Minister for Law and Human Rights, Yasonna Laoly, became a key voice in the debate about the death penalty. On 10 October 2017, in a meeting with members of parliament, Laoly attempted to strike a balance between supporters and critics of the death penalty: in his words, to find a win-win solution. In this way, he appealed to the majority of Indonesians who still supported the death penalty, whilst also appeasing critics who oppose it.
The idea to reform the death penalty provision without totally abolishing it became a major point of discussion during deliberations over the revision of the Criminal Code (Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana, KUHP). One of the drafters, Muladi, a law professor at Diponegoro University, labelled this kind of effort as an ‘Indonesian way’, a path to resolve the debate between retentionist and abolitionist groups. Although death penalty critics questioned if it is indeed possible to 'win' when someone is executed, the language stuck.
As a result of this work and despite the existing death penalty clauses remaining, major changes in the Criminal Code Law No. 1 Year 2023, which went into effect in January 2026 introduced significant changes. Articles 67 and 98 of the revised Criminal Code position the death penalty as an alternative sentence, no longer as a main punishment. Law enforcement agencies should use it only for the most extraordinary cases.
Criminal justice reform in 2023 also exempted certain groups from being executed, including pregnant women and people with mental illnesses. This exclusion is in line with international human rights standards stating that execution for people with psychosocial disabilities amounts to torture. It also anticipates many findings that demonstrate a high prevalence of people with disabilities on death row.
The reforms also introduced new commutation provisions. Article 100 of the Criminal Code dictates that each death sentence comes with a 10-year probationary period. However, the original 2023 draft still contained some ambiguity as judges could interpret that the commutation is optional depending on the role of the defendants and the remorse shown by defendants. In drug cases where law enforcement agencies often portrayed couriers as kingpins, these were factors commonly used for such an interpretation. To fix this ambiguity parliament passed Law Number 1 Year 2026 regarding Criminal Adjustment (the Criminal Adjustment Bill), which revised Article 100, removing these factors from consideration when judges apply a death sentence. Since the law also follows the principle of lex favor reo – if there is a revision of the law, defendants should benefit from the law that is favourable for them – death row inmates sentenced before 2026 should also be eligible for commutation.
After a death row inmate has been imprisoned for ten years, their sentence can be commuted to life imprisonment under a presidential decree after the Supreme Court provides recommendations. This provision creates opportunities to reduce the number of death row inmates, which as of 10 August 2026 amounts to 676 people, according to the portal of Directorate of Correction. On paper there is a real chance of limiting the use of the death penalty and preventing executions from happening again.
Three contradictions
The reality is, however, that this possibility dwells in contradictions. The first contradiction is that positioning the death penalty as an alternative sentence may not dissuade law enforcement agencies and stakeholders from using the death penalty. In 2025, according to a report by Harm Reduction International, new death sentences for drug-related crimes jumped to 143, doubling in just a year.
In retrospect, it is arguable that the new Criminal Code increases the appetite to sentence people to die. Some judges no longer feel conflicted about sentencing people to death precisely the commutation provision is there. They may perceive that the final decision does not lie in their hands, as the president can still commute the sentence, lifting the burden that some judges felt before sentencing people to death.
Death penalty rhetoric also remains common in high-profile criminal cases. For example, consider the recent confiscation of 72 kilograms of gold, allegedly linked to the Assistant Attorney General for Special Crimes (Jampidsus). Many members of parliament quickly proposed punishing the perpetrators with death sentences, as if it were a magic bullet to prevent such graft cases from happening.
The second contradiction lies in the pseudo-exemption of execution. While Article 99 excludes pregnant women and people with mental illnesses from being executed, it does not mean that their lives will eventually be saved. The law only postpones the execution until the pregnant woman has given birth and no longer breastfeeds her baby or the person with mental illnesses has been cured.
Suddenly this article loses all of this humanity. It is inhumane to separate the a new born child from their mother or to rehabilitate someone just for them to be killed. It also raises a question about how to heal one’s mind if the purpose of its rehabilitation is the very reason why this person was troubled in the first place.
This pseudo-exemption also creates assumptions that death row inmates will ‘fake’ mental illness just to escape execution. The Attorney General’s Office used this allegation back in 2015 when they executed a Brazilian, Rodrigo Gularte, who had been living with bipolar and schizophrenia long before he went to Indonesia.
The last contradiction is that although inmates have a right to commutation, in practice it has yet to happen. The Criminal Code allocated three years for the government to prepare resources and guidelines for implementation before it came into effect in January 2026. Ten months after it came into force, no regulation on commutation is in sight. According to the latest estimate from the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, there are approximately 133 death row inmates who are eligible to be commuted in January 2026.
Legislators designed the commutation provision to alleviate the pain of waiting in uncertainty. Instead, its delay added more layers of uncertainty because, right now, these death row inmates do not know whether they will be considered for commutation, how the process will go, nor even what documents they need in order to prepare for a request for commutation.
The Ministry of Law stated that the draft has been finalised and sent to the president, through the Ministry of State Administration, to be legalised. If the president does not even have the time to sign a regulation that has been discussed for so long, it becomes doubtful whether he will then have the time to consider the commutation applications of numerous people at once.
All in all, these three contradictions happen because Indonesia chose to sustain the unsustainable logic of the death penalty. As long as a nation still keeps the death penalty in the law, any restriction and stipulation around it will still be antithetical, as it ultimately grounds itself on an assumption that certain life no longer holds value.
Prabowo’s position
It is no wonder that Ben Bland called his biography of the former president, Man of Contradictions. Jokowi's persona, actions and statements often ran contradictory to one another. Bland argued that Jokowi seesawed between nationalism, as shown by the rhetoric of upholding sovereignty through implementation of the death penalty and the execution of 18 people, and globalism, as shown by the unofficial moratorium he implemented later.
Unlike Jokowi, the current president Prabowo Subianto has made several comments opposing the death penalty in certain cases. During the presidential debate he boasted about his efforts to save an Indonesian migrant worker, Wilfrida, from being executed in Malaysia. At the same time, he ran on the platform of continuing his predecessor’s legacy, including criminal justice reform and drug policy.
President Prabowo now has to choose between sustaining the use of the death penalty or resolving the issues mentioned above. Learning from other countries that have successfully moved on from ADF status to legal abolition of the death penalty will allow his government to assess as to whether the ‘Indonesian way’ set by his predecessor is really working. A failure to do so risks seeing his presidency succumb to the allure of the death penalty, a practice wholly incompatible with a democratic nation.
Albert Wirya (albertwiryas@gmail.com) is the director of Lembaga Bantuan Hukum Masyarakat and a part-time lecturer at the Criminology Department, University of Indonesia.
