INDONESIAN ACTIVISTS FACE UPWARD DEATH PENALTY TREND

researcher Dave McRae said 2008 was a dismal year for opponents of the death penalty in Indonesia. At least ten people were executed, almost equaling the number of executions in Indonesia during the preceding decade, and the Constitutional Court rejected a challenge to the method of execution. Despite those setbacks, a small group of dedicated Indonesian abolitionists keep up their campaign, which centres on human rights NGOs, religious figures and certain
academics. "We had hoped that after the reform movement in 1998 it would be easy to get rid of the death penalty," Rusdi Marpaung, member of the Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, said recently. "But it didn't turn out to be the case. The Criminal Code left by the Dutch remained in place."