TEMPO.CO, Jakartav– Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi said President Joko Widodo conveyed his deepest condolences for the passing of Siti Zainab, an Indonesian migrant worker who was recently executed by the Saudi Arabian government in Medina.
Retno said the president sent a letter of protest to the Saudi government upon Zainab’s execution.
“The president was sad upon hearing this news. I have reported everything to him, according about our next steps,” she said at the State Palace on Tuesday, April 14, 2015. “We have done our best.”
Retno said Jokowi was disappointed by the Saudi decision not to inform the Indonesian government on the hanging, despite Indonesian efforts to cancel the execution through diplomatic endeavors. “Including offering diyat (blood money),” she said.
Retno admitted the Indonesian government was facing difficulties during the lobbying, among them related to the qishas law (equal punishment), which mentioned the cancellation of the execution would require the granting of mercy from the victim’s family.
Retno said Jokowi ordered staffers from the Foreign Affairs Ministry to fly to Bangkalan, East Java, after hearing the execution news to inform Zainab’s family about her death. “We facilitated the visit to the deceased’s family,” she said, adding that the government was still mulling the right time to bring Zainab’s body home.
Zainab was sentenced to death in 2001 for killing her employer’s wife in Saudi Arabia in 1999. The Indonesian government had taken countless measures to call off the execution, yet to no avail, as the victim’s family insisted on the execution.
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REZA ADITYA
