Cilacap, Indonesia--Families of foreign drug convicts set to be hauled before the firing squad in Indonesia issued desperate mercy pleas Saturday, as relatives and diplomats descended on a prison island ahead of the looming executions.
Consular officials were arriving at a town near Nusakambangan, the high-security prison island where its executions are carried out, and where all of the death row convicts are now congregated.
The foreigners -- two from Australia, one each from Brazil, France and the Philippines, and four from Africa -- have all lost appeals for clemency from President Joko Widodo, who argues that Indonesia is fighting a drugs emergency.
Widodo has turned a deaf ear to increasingly clamorous appeals on the convicts' behalf from their governments, from social media and from others such as band Napalm Death -- the president is a huge heavy metal fan.
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop on Saturday renewed Canberra's appeals for Widodo "to have a change of heart" but admitted she feared the worst, while France has said the execution of its citizen would be "incomprehensible".
The family of the Filipina, Mary Jane Veloso, arrived at Cilacap, the town on Java that serves as the gateway to Nusakambangan. The father and mother, her two sons aged six and 12, and sister pushed through a scrum of waiting journalists.
"If anything bad happens to may daughter, I will hold many people accountable. They owe us my daughter's life," Veloso's 55-year-old mother, Celia, told a Philippine radio station.
"I hope my appeal reaches President Widodo."
AFP
