INDONESIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SPEAKS OUT ON DEATH PENALTY

while addressing the Australian media after the talks, Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said that "It's not only that Australia and Indonesia are divided on the issue of capital punishment. The fact is that the whole world is divided into groups of countries who have abolished that penalty and those who still retain that penalty. So, on that matter my advice would be, let's continue our discussions at the bilateral and global levels on how we deal with it and don't bilateralise the problem as only a problem between Indonesia and Australia. I would like to say also that the question of the death penalty has been widely discussed, even now as we are an open and democratic society. I will share with you, for example, the Indonesian National Commission of Human Rights has been favouring, or championing in fact, the abolition of death penalty. So on the moratorium as well as on the principle questions of capital punishment, this has been discussed almost every year since the early 1990s and Indonesia would actively participate at the UN forums."