Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo yesterday spoke up about the recent execution of migrant worker Tuty Tursilawati in Saudi Arabia, which the Indonesian government says was done without any prior notice from the Saudi government.
“Yes, we are right to regret [the execution]. It was carried out without notification,” Jokowi told reporters yesterday, as quoted by Kompas.
Jokowi said his administration has repeatedly urged Saudi Arabia to warn them about Indonesian nationals facing legal trouble and punishment in their country.
“This is a legal jurisdiction [issue], the legal authority is with the Saudi king. I have met them many times, with King Salman, with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman, and most recently with the Saudi foreign affairs minister, I kept on repeating the message,” Jokowi said.
“Don’t think we’re not taking political steps [on this issue]. The foreign minister is also doing the same. Our embassy is doing the same every day.”
In fact, on Oct. 23, days before Tuty’s execution on Oct. 29, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi welcomed her Saudi counterpart Adel al-Jubeir in Jakarta, during which time the latter conveyed his government’s commitment to improve the protection of Indonesian nationals living and working in Saudi Arabia.
Despite Indonesia’s pleas, the Foreign Ministry’s Migrant Workers’ Protection Director Muhammad Iqbal yesterday explained that Saudi Arabia and Indonesia do not have a mandatory consular notification agreement obligating either country to warn the other about legal trouble their citizens are facing abroad.
The absence of such an agreement has made it difficult for the Indonesian government to extend legal aid to their citizens in Saudi Arabia, as was the case with Tuty.
Shortly after Tuty’s execution, Minister Retno said she lodged an official note of protest to both the Saudi foreign minister and the country’s embassy in Jakarta.
Tuty was one of 16 Indonesian nationals on death row in Saudi Arabia. She was arrested in 2010 and sentenced to death in 2011 for the murder of her employer, which she claimed was done in self defense to protect herself from sexual abuse.
In March of this year, another Indonesian migrant worker, Zaini Misri, was also executed in Saudi Arabia without prior notice to Indonesian officials.
Zaini’s execution temporarily strengthened Indonesia’s conviction to resume its moratorium on migrant workers being sent to the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. However, on Oct. 11, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia entered into an agreement on a pilot project to send a limited number of Indonesian migrant workers to the kingdom under the promise of better protection, thereby bypassing the moratorium, which was introduced in 2015.
Migrant workers advocacy group Migrant Care has urged the Indonesian government to scrap the agreement following Tuty’s execution.
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