Philippines offers clues in drug war
JAKARTA, Indonesia — On July 22, normally mild-manned Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo instructed his police to shoot drug traffickers.
“Be firm, especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country and resist arrest.” he said, “Shoot them because we indeed are in a narcotics emergency position now.” On July 24, police did just that, killing an alleged methamphetamine smuggler from China in Jakarta — the fourth such death in the capital that month.
The killings and hardening government rhetoric have raised fears that Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous nation, is now taking some cues from the Philippines as it steps up its own deadly war on drugs. And why not? More than 7,000 people have died in President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war since he took office last year, sparking widespread accusations of extrajudicial killings and human rights abuses. Yet the Philippine president has been rewarded with sky-high approval ratings, unquestioned regional influence and glowing praise from President Trump.
Commissioner General Budi Waseso, the head of Indonesia’s antinarcotics agency, offered praise last month for Duterte’s drug war and said that he hoped to ramp up drug seizures in the near future. “I never say that we have to follow the Philippines. We have our own laws,” said Waseso to Reuters. “I have to say, though, that Duterte’s policy shows he is taking care of his citizens.”
President Widodo “has always had an aggressive stance on drugs, but this is an intensification of rhetoric that is worrying because it can be seen as an endorsement of extrajudicial killings,” said Usman Hamid, the director of Amnesty International Indonesia.
Indonesia, unlike the Philippines, already employs the death penalty legally, including against nonviolent drug traffickers. Widodo has overseen 18 executions since taking office in 2014. But experts agree that Indonesia’s drug war has been much less violent than in the Philippines.
Police in Jakarta did not respond to requests for data, but Jacqui Baker at Murdoch University in Australia estimates that Indonesian police kill hundreds of people each year, numbers roughly in line with those in the U.S. In a significant number of cases, evidence suggests alleged drug traffickers were the victims of extrajudicial executions — and research indicates this number is increasing.
Hamid agreed that the situation in Indonesia is not nearly as severe as in the Philippines, and said that Widodo would face political constraints even if he chose to copy Duterte. But he argued that small steps in that direction are significant, and that the Indonesian president has surely noticed the success Duterte now enjoys at home and abroad.
“It’s likely that governments all around this region see the way Trump praised Duterte as a signal that they may take the same approach toward illicit drugs,” Hamid said.
In an April phone call, Trump praised Duterte for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem … Many countries have the problem, we have the problem, but what a great job you are doing and I just wanted to call and tell you that,” said Trump, according to a transcript of the call.