The Jakarta Post, September 04, 2006
On Tibo case

I refer to the article To kill or not to kill: Ethical and legal debate by Elizabeth Chandra (The Jakarta Post, Sept. 1, page 6).

Elizabeth Chandra's generally well argued and thought provoking article on the death penalty nevertheless contains serious flaws. People opposing the execution of the death penalty against "the Poso trio" do not do so because they oppose the death penalty, but because during the last year serious doubts have sprung up whether the three really were responsible for the massacre for which they have been convicted.

Besides that their two trials in 2001 were conducted in Poso, the center of their "enemy territory", provoking doubts about whether the judges, under immense pressure from (understandably) emotional masses -- remember, the sectarian violence was then still going on -- could have had the necessary independence to conduct the trial fairly.

While Tibo and the two others sentenced to death in Poso have always insisted on their innocence, Amrozi and the other Bali bombers acknowledged their role in the Bali bombing and did not asks for grace. That the question of capital punishment in general entered the discussion was because the case of the Poso trio was, in public opinion, connected with the case of Amrozi (the three Muslims can, politically speaking, not be executed if the three Catholics are spared).

Thus many of those opposing Tibo's execution added that they were in general opposed to the death penalty and would gladly accept if the execution of Amrozi and all other condemned be postponed indefinitely.

There is one other point: Tibo and his two colleagues, three Florinese Catholics, are the only ones to be given the death penalty during the whole two brutal communal wars (Poso and Maluku with more than 8,000 people killed), while all sides recognize that Catholics and Florinese played only a marginal role in both conflicts. Doesn't this look strange?

FRANZ MAGNIS-SUSENO
Jakarta