Amnesty International has labelled the execution of six people convicted of drugs offences in Indonesia as a “retrograde step”, and is calling on President Joko Widodo to scrap the death penalty.

Two women were among those executed on Sunday by firing squad, in the first executions carried out under recently elected president Widodo.

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The foreigners hailed from Brazil, the Netherlands, Vietnam, Malawi and Nigeria.

Amnesty International’s Research Director for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Rupert Abbott, called the executions “a seriously regressive move”.

“The new administration has taken office on the back of promises to make human rights a priority, but the execution of six people flies in the face of these commitments,” Mr Abbott said in a statement.

“This is a country that just a few years ago had taken positive steps to move away from the death penalty, but the authorities are now steering the country in the opposite direction.

“The government must immediately halt plans to put more people to death.”

Mr Abbott urged Indonesia to “impose a moratorium on the use of the death penalty with a view to its eventual abolition”.

Indonesia has tough anti-drugs laws and President Widodo, who took office in October, has voiced strong support for capital punishment despite his image as a reformist.

The most recent executions come as Bali Nine death row inmates Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan remain on death row in Bali.

They are on a list of 26 prisoners Indonesia says will be executed this year.

Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, were sentenced to death for their part in a 2005 scheme to import more than 8kg of heroin from Indonesia into Australia.