The posters were the giveaway. Professionally produced with near perfect
English, some almost works of art, showing Tony Abbott sprouting horns above
the caption: ‘Go to hell Abbott with your druggies’.
These were no slogans scribbled on torn cardboard by
outraged citizens spontaneously reacting to real slights. This was the Indonesian standard rent-a-mob shouting
outside the Australian Embassy in Jakarta in late February, probably for a feed
and a Rp 50,000 [AUD 5] note.
Who was behind this choreographed display? ‘Dark forces’ is
the usual Indonesian response, meaning anyone from a political party, the army,
and the police through to an individual with a gripe and the cash. Some protestors claimed to be Pemuda Muhammadiyah, young members of the second largest Islamic
organisation in the nation.
Despite this faux anger there’s no doubt that Australia is
genuinely on the nose as the execution of the Bali Nine masterminds Andrew Chan
and Myuran Sukumaran swirls closer and the comments from Australia get shriller.
Tony Abbott linking the 2004 tsunami aid with a plea for
mercy was so counterproductive and stupid it begs the question: Who is advising
the PM on handling relations with Indonesia?
If Jakarta diplomats then they need to squeeze out of their
fortress, ride busses, wander markets and mingle with the crowds to hear the
public voice. If it’s Foreign Affairs
and Trade staffers they should be buttonholing academics who know Indonesia and
are almost in despair at the way everything is turning to custard.
All this could have been foreseen and contingency plans
prepared. Ideally we should have been
advancing abolition of the death penalty world-wide long before two of our
citizens shuffled to the head of the queue in the nation next door.
Australia is not the only one at fault.
Indonesia has turned the upcoming executions into a circus
of nationalism, the chance to bore it up the West and show who’s really in
charge. The ‘go to hell’ slogan is significant
because it was used by first President Soekarno in the 1950s when he
nationalised Western companies and ordered expats out of the country.
Despite Indonesia declaring independence 70 years ago this
August the ghost of colonialism lingers, an insecurity not encountered in Vietnam,
Malaysia and Singapore.
The police are also keen to party. They’ve staged a ghoulish public dress
rehearsal in Bali demonstrating how the condemned men will be dragged away to
their deaths on the prison island of Nusakambangan.
Pictures of hungry coffins and animated enactments of the
execution have fed the media. It’s not
quite the excesses of the French Revolution – but it’s certainly getting close.
What’s overlooked in the glee at having a deaf-to-reason president
who seems to care nothing about international concerns is the needless damage
being inflicted on a nation long seen as chaotic and corrupt. Now it’s being painted cruel.
And not just to the condemned.
Politicians pontificating in the capital about deterrents
don’t get to labour in the killing fields.
No blood on their boots. No sleepwalking
like Lady Macbeth as the nightmares play, rewind, replay.
That’s the fate of the wong
kecil, the little people who get to do the State’s dirty work. Pity these unwilling actors in the Jakarta-produced
horror show, and think how it’s going to scar their lives.
Let’s start at the end.
In Indonesian executions ambulances collect the corpses, not
hearses. Paramedics are used to accidents
and trauma. Their job is to rush the ill
and injured to hospital. They’ve been trained
to save lives.
Not this time.
Instead they’ll load bodies into coffins. Maybe they’ll first unpin the target aprons
to be washed, ironed and reused, because butchering is expensive. The entry mark
for a 5.56 mm bullet is little more than the diameter of a ballpoint pen, but
the exit wound is fist sized and gaping.
So the back of the victims’ shirts will be ripped and
splattered with blood, bone splinters and slices of pink flesh, the front
soaked in a frothy mix of gore, tears and vomit, the pants filled with urine
and excreta for every orifice opens up in
the death throes.
The stench a mix of warm blood, faeces and upchuck laced
with cordite.
If the marksmen have blinked back a tear when squeezing
triggers – for only unhinged monsters can kill another defenceless human in cold
blood without a ripple of revulsion – then an officer will have fired a final
shot into the temple.
Hunters know that killing wounded animals this way bursts the
brain and blows out the eyeballs on stalks like mushrooms. In a flash facial features become
unrecognizable.
This is what the nurses will see as they lift the limp
bodies. However ghastly the accidents
they’ll attend in years ahead, the execution ground scene will stay bright,
every line sharp, every color clear.
All other events are misadventures, acts of God. This one is deliberate. An inhuman act of man.
But we’re jumping ahead.
Before the medics move a doctor has to pronounce death. Earlier he’d
located the men’s still beating hearts with his stethoscope, a procedure we know
well.
Is there any communication between professional and
patient? Does he comfort by repeating
the universal Doctor’s Lie - ‘this won’t hurt’ while ensuring the bull’s-eye is
correctly placed?
Or does he, like the Singapore hangman Darsan Singh, whisper
that they’re going to a better place?
Doctors graduate with the Hippocratic Oath. The structure varies but the heart of the
matter lies in three simple words: Do No Harm.
Did the execution doctor swear so? If he uttered those sacred words will his
conscience turn cancerous and gnaw away his insides to an early grave?
In 2008 Catholic priest Charlie Burrows witnessed the
execution in Indonesia of two Nigerian drug traffickers. Later he told the
Constitutional Court that the men were “moaning again and again for seven
minutes” after being shot. He’s likely to be present. praying when Chan and
Sukumaran die.
Will the gunmen light up a smoke and stroll across to view
their handiwork? Unless they’ve served
in West Papua the only objects in their sights till now have been cardboard
cutouts shaped like a charging armed brute.
Now they’ve shot unthreatening prisoners tied to chairs and
posts, rocking with terror. Close-ups of what an assault rifle can do will sear
their souls.
A step back from the hands-on procedures of judicial murder
are the prison guards. Some have got to
know the condemned men well. They’ve
looked into their eyes, they’ve exchanged banter, and they’ve recognized fellow
humans who made mistakes. Let he who
hasn’t fire the first shot.
Do they not weep? For
the condemned, themselves and their country, knowing all will be contaminated by
this evil event.
Then the weaponry experts calculating the trajectory of
death. They signed up for a career in
military engineering, not a role in an abattoir. If they’ve chosen the site carefully the sand
or soil should be sufficiently friable to soak up the blood.
Organizing a killing is like planning a wedding – making sure
nothing can go wrong in the Unhappiest Day of Our Lives. This is the job of the lawyers and
administrators who pledged to serve the community.
Participating in a project to kill wasn’t on their job
description. When they lie with their wives in the joy of bringing new life
into the world, will they falter because they’ve been cursed by helping end
another?
How do all these brutalized people, the unwitting mechanics of
murder following Jakarta’s orders, feel about capital punishment? In other countries they’d sue the State for
exposure to such corrosive horrors.
At the head of this long line of victims stands President
Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, leader of the world’s third largest democracy, once keen
to make it the world’s greatest, elected just last year on a wave of hope for
change.
He could be an international
statesman, a champion of human rights praised for his compassion and courage by
eradicating capital punishment and accepting the wisdom of the 16th
President of the United States.
For when he was about Jokowi’s age Abraham Lincoln gave a
speech in Washington where he said: “I have always found that mercy bears
richer fruits than strict justice”.
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