The Bali 9 saga is now almost done and dusted. The two
Australians involved were finally executed after extended periods of appeal and
pledge for clemency. There are outcries internationally over the treatment of
the case and Indonesia is defiant of condemnations thrown at it.
It is sad that the whole situation came down to this. I
tried to avoid making comments on this as it is something that truly divides
humanity. The fundamental issue here is that these people did commit a death
inducing crime in Indonesia. It is written in the constitution that drug crimes
attract death penalty. So I assume most people in this drug smuggling business
know about it. But then if that is still something they are willing to risk
their lives for, then it is something they need to own up to. This does not
mean I agreed to death penalty as I personally do not think a life for another
life or basically public execution would improve humanity at all. But at the
same time I cannot say Indonesian law is backward because I think they know
much better than the rest of the world the havoc drugs wrecked in the country.
Much effort was made to save these two young men’s life in
the past couple of years. They also seemed to be repentant and turned over to a
new leaf. Their transformation is a marvellous story indicating how extreme
situation could help changing someone’s world view and taking a different turn
for their lives. At the end we lost two repented convicts who could eventually
do great to help the society but I do think they understand they have to own up
to their actions. Clemency is at the mercy of others and whether they are being
granted has no logistic relation to anything. However, there were certain
things that I think we should look into about the whole case.
First of all, it was the Australian Federal Police who
tipped off about these boys, and eventually led to their arrest. It was a
concerted effort to stop drug trafficking. However, I do not know whether there
were sufficient thoughts about the fate of these two smugglers when the police
decided to tip the Indonesian government off. As I understood in 2010 the
clause of considering Australia’s opposition on death penalty was included in
the international cooperation agreements. But then in 2014 the Liberal
Government removed it. I do not know whether it is because it was introduced by
the Labor Government that the Liberals felt compelled to remove it or it was
actually due to operational logistic issues. In this case, if we consider the
fate facing these two smugglers once they are arrested in Indonesia, would the
police consider proposing to intercept these two Australians at Australian
ports to save them from this agony? If so the whole picture would be different
but then at the same time we might not have two repented convicts that we now
moan about.
The other issue was how the international relationship was
being handled in the whole case.
As all these pleas were going on, we just came off some diplomatic
hiccups with Indonesia including the hacking “scandal” against Indonesia. The
Australian Government was defiant and considered itself has every right to do
so for national security. Indonesia was furious. Then came the asylum seeker
issue where boats were towed back to the open sea to “stop the boats”.
Indonesia was against it and considered it as violating human rights and so did
the United Nations, but the Australian Government claimed within every right to
do so to deliver its promise to the voters. It even went further to decry or
attack anything that the United Nations said or any organisations that opposed
to their approaches. Further we had Tony Abbott claiming rights for clemency
based on the international aid Australia gave to Indonesia during the tsunami.
This triggered a fund raising campaign in Indonesia to give the money back to
Australia. With all these issues hovering around diplomatic efforts Julia
Bishop trying to achieve, I am not surprised the Indonesia Government would use
this as a face off opportunity to tear the all “self-proclaimed almighty
Australian Government” down. This
is definitely good for the Indonesian Government to show its people that this
Government would not subject to finger pointing of foreign powers, which is
exactly what the Australian Government was doing in the past year and a half.
The most disappointing part is that when Tony Abbott first got elected he mentioned
changing focus from Geneva to Asia (or something like that) but then his
version of Asia is just brown nosing China and neglecting others. I could be wrong but then people can
only be judged by their deeds.
Lastly I think we need to think about when we are condemning
others for non-humanitarian deeds, are we fit to judge? Australia does not have
a good history with humanitarian effort even nowadays just looking at its
approach to “stop the boats”, how they run the offshore centres, and how they
treat the Indigenous people. With all these brilliant track records is the
Liberal Government actually qualified to decry other people’s behaviours? Or it
is only making itself as big as a clown with a series of bad acts? If they do
believe Christianity is more supreme than Islam, where are the truly Christian
acts that could avoid even accomplished professionals to be converted into
extremists? Before we go out all offensive on others maybe it is a good time to
think about what is tearing the country apart inside first. As usual are we
seeing the pecks in other people’s eyes without seeing the logs in ours?
It has been a long journey for the Bali 9 duo but it has
finally come to a sad end. I wish everyone learnt something from this but
judging from what is happening in the media and the Government right now I doubt that would happen. We would even have one of the commercial channels adapting
this tragedy into a miniseries to cash in under the disguise of “telling the
true story” while the so-called current affair programs continue to cash in
with sensational interviews and programming. It is sad, but it seems to be the
world we are living in now.
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