“The fight will not stop until those who deal with [drugs] understand that they have to stop because the alternative is either jail or hell.”

That’s what Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte said during a press conference on Monday to reassert his commitment to the country’s hugely controversial war on drugs, which has left more than 7,000 people dead since last year, often in extrajudicial circumstances.

The abuses of the policy have been widely detailed, earning the condemnation of Human Rights WatchAmnesty International, and the UN.

“Under President Duterte’s rule, the national police are breaking laws they are supposed to uphold while profiting from the murder of impoverished people the government was supposed to uplift,” said Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s Crisis Response Director in a statement. “The same streets Duterte vowed to rid of crime are now filled with bodies of people illegally killed by his own police.”

But to Indonesia’s president Joko Widodo and chief of police Tito Karnavian the Philippines’ model is worth emulating.

In fact, Karnavian called for a new approach last week for confronting drug use — shoot perpetrators.

“From practice in the field, we see that when we shoot drug dealers they go away,” he said when unveiling his plan.

Not long before, President Widodo had this to say:

“Be firm, especially to foreign drug dealers who enter the country and resist arrest. Shoot them because we are indeed in a narcotics emergency position now.”

The admiration is further shared by the head of the country’s National Narcotics Agency, Budi Waseso.

After taking office, Widodo declared a drug emergency, similar to the state of emergency declared by Duterte. Despite the strong rhetoric, however, there hasn’t been a similar erosion of human rights and mass killings.

Read More: Why President Trump's Phone Call to Rodrigo Duterte Is More Than Troubling

But together, these leaders are changing Indonesia's approach to law enforcement and ushering in an era that’s beginning to resemble the situation in the Philippines, according to Al Jazeera.

It’s an approach that favors punishment over rehabilitation.

Indonesia has an estimated six million drug users, or around 2.5% of the population, and 1% receive treatment, compared to a global average of 16%, according to the UN.

Despite a federal mandate to provide drug users with treatment, the government cut funds from rehab programs, while increasing funds for raids, arrests, and punishments, according to Al Jazeera.

This has resulted in a harsher crackdown on drugs.

Last week, a Taiwanese drug trafficker was gunned down by police near the capital Jakarta. In a highly publicized case last summer, three Nigerians and one Indonesian man faced a firing squad for alleged drug smuggling. And in April 2016, 14 people accused of drug trafficking were executed, including two Australian nationals.

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"Imagine every day we have 50 people die because of narcotics, in one year it's 18,000 people because of narcotics," Widodo said to CNN after Australia petitioned for the two men to be spared. "The decision of death penalty is on the court. But they can ask for amnesty to the president, but I tell you there will be no amnesty for drug dealers."

Indonesia hasn’t shown the same capacity for lawlessness as the Philippines when cracking down on drugs. But human rights advocates worry about a potential slide.

“Both Karnavian and Waseso should denounce the Philippines’ ‘war on drugs’ for what it truly is: a brutal, unlawful assault on the rule of law, human rights, and basic decency that has targeted some of the country’s poorest, most marginalised citizens,” Human Right Watch Asia division deputy director Phelim Kine told News Australia.

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Indonesian Leaders Want to Imitate Brutal Filipino Drug War

By Joe McCarthy