Indonesia's plans to execute 10 people following an international summit have human rights campaigners questioning its credibility in the leadership role.
President Joko Widodo, who will on Wednesday open the Asian-African Conference summit, says the executions are only "a matter of time".
His attorney-general is planning the executions of 10 drug offenders, including Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, on a date after the conference closes, to avoid upsetting the high-level guests.
In another sign the date is imminent, the Supreme Court has reportedly rejected the applications for judicial reviews from Ghanaian Martin Anderson and Frenchman Serge Atlaoui.
Jakarta has said it will wait for prisoners to exhaust their appeals before sending all 10 to the firing squad.
Indonesian Representative for the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, Rafendi Djamin, says the original Bandung conference, held 60 years ago, adopted 10 principles.
One of those was respect for basic human rights.
"Indonesia would like to take the lead on these issues but I think there's a question of credibility," he told AAP.
There was also a question of relevance, Mr Djamin said, when Indonesia was bucking the trend towards abolishing the death penalty.
The conference is being promoted with banners of Nelson Mandela, who played a key role in ending the death penalty in South Africa.
Human Rights Watch Indonesia researcher Andreas Harsono says the event doesn't live up to Mandela's ideals.
"This is what the conference is missing," he said.
"They are missing the spirit of seeking the truth and reconciliation." But the conference would be the right moment to announce an historic moratorium on the death penalty, he said.
Last week's executions of two Indonesian woman in Saudi Arabia have worried campaigners, who say Indonesia's own use of the death penalty hampers its position to save citizens on death row abroad.
"It should be a turning point where they realise executions are not the answer," he said.
"This is the right moment to make a grand gesture, they should do that."
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