Indonesia to execute 14 drug convicts this week, most are foreign citizens

JAKARTA, July 27 (UPI) -- Indonesia will execute 14 drug offenders, most of them foreigners, the country's attorney general said Wednesday.

The announcement spurred United Nations human right officials to urge the country's government to rethink the "unjust" use of capital punishment.

Four of those slated to die are reportedly Indonesian; 10 others are from South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Pakistan and India.

Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said the executions are expected to begin as early as Friday and completed no later than Sunday.

The planned executions come after 14 executions of drug offenders last year. The government has put more men to death in the last two years than it has in the previous decade.

"The increasing use of the death penalty in Indonesia is terribly worrying and I urge the government to immediately end this practice, which is unjust and incompatible with human rights," said Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, in a statement.

"The death penalty is not an effective deterrent relative to other forms of punishment, nor does it protect people from drug abuse."

President Joko Widodo, in his war on Indonesia's drug problem, has claimed about 50 people are killed in his country each day from drug use.