JUDICIAL MURDER HAS NO PLACE IN INDONESIA - OR ANYWHERE ELSE

Self-inflicted wounds      

                                           

Indonesia has been rightly promoting its many positives.

It’s the third largest democracy with Asia’s freest media; it’s the globe’s most moderate Muslim nation and ASEAN’s economic powerhouse.

The biggest archipelago is a resource-rich environment open for business and tourism.  It’s inviting the world and her husband to pack their bags, jump a Garuda and head for Wonderful Indonesia.  As the ads say - ‘know it, love it’.

 What’s not to like?

Only a cruel and illogical approach to the drug problem by maintaining the death penalty – with authorities checking carbines and cable ties for the next round anytime soon.

Indonesia’s stubborn refusal to discard this primitive and ineffective practice – now being proposed for rape - is corroding all the splendid qualities which make the 17,000 plus islands and their multi-ethnic peoples a delight.

Why does the government allow twisted thinking to dash down all the exciting images it has been building over the years? Why continue to drive on the wrong side of history when most have switched to the other lane?

 Only 37 nations still have judicial murder on their statutes and exercise the law.

Apart from Indonesia the key culprits are China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia plus several rogue states.  Does an otherwise progressive and reformed Indonesia happily stand in this company of brutes?

A further 50 countries still have the law though haven’t used it for the past decade. Six retain it only for mass killings.

Like the Dutch beheader’s sword now hanging idle in Jakarta’s Kota Tua, the gallows, stakes, electric chairs and chopping blocks from 102 nations now rust and rot in museums - examples of how their ignorant forebears behaved before they elevated  human rights above all else.

Every day President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo faces a mountain of compelling issues, including repairing the nation’s infrastructure, boosting the economy, calming inter-faith tensions and eradicating poverty.

Despite the workload he’s found time to back the death penalty, arguing that it’s necessary to curb drug trafficking.  So far 14 peddlers of illegal addictives have been executed under his 18 month watch.

During the ten-year rule of his predecessor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, only one of the 19 victims had been condemned for drug trafficking.  The others were murderers.

Last year’s clutch included men from the Philippines, France, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia and two Australians who had reformed during their decade in detention.

The killings led to widespread condemnation. Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands withdrew their ambassadors.  This is the diplomatic equivalent of publicly walking out of your neighbor’s house because you find their behavior repellent.

Inside Indonesia, Komnas HAM (the National Commission on Human Rights) wants capital punishment abolished.  So do ten other NGOs that have written to Luhut Panjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Police, Law and Security Affairs asking for ‘a moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty’.

Last month President Jokowi told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that shooting traffickers was necessary because up to 50 citizens died every day from drug abuse.

The figures come from a 2008 study by Universitas Indonesia and Badan Narkotika Nasional (BNN – the National Narcotics Agency).  Academic researchers have labelled the findings ‘ambiguous’, inaccurate’ and ‘over simplistic’. 

Even if the statistics are accurate, an annual total of 18,250 deaths is about four per cent of the World Health Organization’s estimate of smoking-related fatalities.

Using the President’s logic then Philip Morris, the largest trafficker of addictive substances in Indonesia, should be tied to a stake and shot to shreds.  As the British businessman died in 1873, directors of the American company could be executed instead.

Indonesia will win the World Cup before this happens, even though it’s the logical extension to the President’s reasoning. Apart from an international outcry it would cause a stampede of investors.  The economy would collapse, as it did when Soekarno nationalised Western businesses in 1958.

President Jokowi has also argued that ‘shock therapy’ will curb the drug menace.  Curiously the threat of death, even a painful and prolonged sentence through metastatic lung cancer doesn’t change behavior. So why should a quick 5.56 mm bullet dishearten?

Every time one of Indonesia’s 60 million nicotine addicts pulls out a fag they’re confronted by a fume-wreathed skull and the slogan Merokok Membunuhmu (Smoking Kills You).  Yet still they smoke.

Drug traffickers are indisputably evil. Traders in jail are daily reminders of tough penalties. The facts show the present policy is not a deterrent but a distraction.

The collateral damage caused is extreme. 

Those gleefully announcing the killings to come don’t do the foul deeds themselves. They’re distant from the macabre prison rituals.  They don’t see the ripped flesh, hear the death rattles before dawn, smell the vomit, sweat the nightmare.

They don’t pass their remaining lives forever recalling they’ve helped slaughter defenceless beings in cold blood, the worst thing anyone can do to another human.

All involved in the vile process are corrupted. So is the reputation of a fine nation, crippled by a flawed ideology that has no place in a moral universe.

##

 (First published in The Jakarta Post 26 May 2016)

EXECUTING A FLAWED POLICY

Gunning down a nation’s reputation    

               

There’s a popular anecdote in Indonesia about President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo.  It was told to journalists by the man himself - perhaps it’s apocryphal.

Shortly after taking office in 2014 he was in Beijing for an APEC summit; at the official dinner he apparently insisted on sitting alongside leaders Obama, Putin and Xi because Indonesia is a negara besar (great power or major nation). 

Measured by population the claim is correct – Indonesia ranks fourth in the world. Geographically it’s the largest archipelago.  These attributes have been inherited, not earned.

Jokowi is also right if greatness is gauged by potential.  His nation has huge deposits of natural resources, vast areas of fertile land and enterprising people.  It’s been a democracy since the start of this century - the world’s largest Muslim country with a name for practising moderation – a fine accolade.

But in political management terms the situation is less than great. Indonesia’s nominal GNP ranks 16^th, even behind Australia with one tenth of the population.  For ease of doing business the Republic stands at 109 on the World Bank index.  Just 30 minutes ferry ride distant is Singapore at number one.

In sports Indonesia is a non-starter having never won international titles beyond badminton. This year tiny New Zealand scored the Laureus Award – the Oscar of sporting achievement – after the All Blacks became global rugby champions.  NZ has fewer people than Surabaya.

Jokowi says his homeland is a maritime nation.  It has just two submarines built in 1981 and no aircraft carriers.  Its military strength is less than Taiwan’s, and the US$6.9 billion defence budget one tenth of Russia’s.

Indonesia has more than 2,000 universities and tertiary institutions but none in the world’s top 500. Its scientists, creative artists and philosophers have rare talent long crushed by an authoritarian culture dominated by oligarchs and the military. No surprise that the nation has yet to claim a Nobel Prize.

However measured in terms of judicial graft, discrimination and brutality Indonesia is a negara besar.  On Transparency International’s corruption perception scale it’s 88. For application of the rule of law it’s number 52 out of 102. 

Justice can be bought.  The Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi  (KPK Corruption Eradication Commission) has successfully convicted many law officers including judges in courts established to counter corruption. Former Chief Justice Akil Mochtar is behind bars. 

These successes have scratched, not wounded the system.  It’s widely believed that those suffering the most severe sentences have empty wallets.

Fourteen real or perceived drug traffickers were executed in Indonesia at the Nusa​ Kambangan jail last year – most on 29 April.​  They included men from the Philippines, France, Ghana, Nigeria, Brazil, Indonesia and two Australians who had reformed during their decade in detention.

The Indonesian legal world is no repository of confidence. According to the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) Zainal Abidin, the sole Indonesian in the last batch to face the M16s, could not appeal because his file had disappeared.

The South American Rodrigo Gularte suffered from serious mental disorders and didn’t understand he was to die, according to his priest Father Charlie Burrows.

Filipino Mary Jane Veloso’s execution was stopped in the final hours when another trafficker suddenly confessed to police.

The men’s deaths led to widespread international condemnation. Australia, Brazil and the Netherlands withdrew their ambassadors, inflicting significant damage to Indonesia’s international image. 

Not all anger is expressed beyond Indonesia’s borders.  Komnas HAM (the National Commission on Human Rights) is an advocate for reform, as are many NGOs.

Most countries have abandoned the death penalty.  Eventually economic sanctions will be applied against nations that execute, and their overseas representatives will be treated as pariahs.

In Europe this month President Jokowi told German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the death penalty was necessary because between 40 and 50 citizens died every day from drug abuse.

These are the same figures he used to justify last year’s executions, which suggests capital punishment has had no impact.

The statistics come from a 2008 study organised by Universitas Indonesia and Badan Narkotika Nasional (BNN – the National Narcotics Agency).  Australian and other academic researchers have labelled the findings ‘ambiguous’, inaccurate’ and ‘oversimplistic’. 

Nonetheless they appeal to those who see solutions to complex problems in stark terms. The logic is false:  If fear of death changes behaviour then millions would stub out when they read cancer statistics.

Sixteen times more Indonesians perish in pain every year from the cruel disease than Jokowi’s estimate of drug deaths; packs warn Merokok Membunuhmu (Smoking Kills You) before an image of a skull, but the rates still rise.

Then there’s the hypocrisy.  Indonesia regularly pleads for the lives of its workers in Saudi Arabia; abused maids who lash back and kill their vile employers are frequently sentenced to beheading. Indonesians get outraged and diplomats protest, but the Saudis seldom listen.

Ironically Jokowi’s intransigence came when the UN opened its first major conference on prohibition policies, examining why the so-called ‘war on drugs’ has failed to stop manufacture, supply and use.

Countries, like Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and some US States have either decriminalised the use of marihuana or reduced penalties.  Others are taking a health approach rather than a punitive position.

However the Indonesian government is not in this group.  Jokowi continues to repeat his determination to pursue a tough line, instructing law authorities and the army to crush drug use.

More offenders are scheduled to go before Indonesia’s firing squads this year.  If the promises are carried out Indonesia will have abandoned its right to claim greatness, unless it wants to sit alongside China, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. According to Amnesty International estimates, these were the major executors in 2015.

Although there are no Australians on the current death list the Sydney Morning Herald recently editorialised on ‘barbarism in the cause of political expediency’ urging Australia to campaign for a global ban ‘for the common good of humanity’, whatever the victims’ nationality:

To many in the West, the need to punish for punishment's sake remains an Old Testament throwback to an-eye-for-an-eye. It has no place in any modern, civilised, democratic nation.

Indonesia's culpability in reviving executions for convicted drug criminals and denying the Australian pair clemency was no better or worse than the policies of China for killing political prisoners or indeed so many states in the US for killing murderers. It is simply wrong.

Australia’s fury at last year’s shootings was blunted by earlier comments from former Prime Minister John Howard. Although he claimed to be against capital punishment he supported the execution of the three Bali bombers who killed 202, including 88 Australians, in 2002.

In Norway mass killer Anders Breivik has no fear of state-sanctioned death, despite having bombed and shot 77 mainly young people.  This year the right-wing extremist won some court victories against the state, which had allegedly failed to respect his civil rights on issues like contact with other prisoners.

The legal decision startled and distressed many. However it reinforced Norway’s position as a nation that holds high the rule of law and refuses to lower its principles by treating its most loathed and unreformed inmate in any illegal way.

It’s not just the condemned who die in countries that keep the death penalty. It degrades and often destroys all involved in the grisly procedures. None feel greatness. Every volley of the execution squads cuts down a nation’s reputation as a fair and just society which respects human rights, a good place to invest and holiday with the kids.

The first steps for Indonesia are to address the deficiencies listed earlier, restore the rule of law and make the legal system clean. That includes a moratorium as a prelude to abolishing capital punishment. 

Then Jokowi won’t need to demand a place on the top table; it will be offered with respect and by right.

(First published in Strategic Review 27 April 2016 - http://www.sr-indonesia.com/web-exclusives/view/gunning-down-a-nation-s-reputation

 

WHY WE STILL NEED SBY

Could SBY bridge the divide?                                                    Duncan Graham

People Can Change - but not President Jokowi, as portrayed by executed Australian Myuran Sukumaran

 Late last month a small workshop was held in Perth.  It involved 20 influential Australians and former Indonesian president Dr Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono [SBY] who retired last October.  The Constitution prohibits a president serving more than two five-year terms.

The private chat encouraged more optimism than SBY’s public speech a day later because participants believed their visitor was listening.  However the formal address was not a pathfinder and largely bypassed by the media. 

Here was a chance to refill the tank with high-octane ideas so the coughing and spluttering vehicle carrying his nation and its neighbour into the future might find second gear.  Sadly SBY missed the turn.

This is not to diminish the importance of the house-full event organized by the USAsia think tank, which has made SBY a Senior Fellow. 

Anything said by the previous leader of the world’s third largest democracy deserved an audience.  His 2010 speech as President to the Federal Parliament encouraged belief that both nations could bond better.  SBY scattered goodwill and we loved it, even if his past as a general in a brutal army made us feel a little queasy.

Since then much has gone sour. Australia bugged the phones of its “great friend” and his wife Kristiani – refusing to apologize for what former PM Tony Abbott called “reasonable intelligence-gathering operations”.

Australia ignored regional solution proposals for handling asylum seekers fearing corrupt authorities would make plans unworkable. It then violated territory to turn back Indonesian ferries knowing the Republic’s navy was too weak to react.

There were other insults, enough for a touchy guy to snub the island continent forever.  That SBY has overlooked the contempts shows mettle – a quality Australians respect.

So he’s scaled the high moral ground but so far failed to capitalise on the achievement.  It was the same in 2004 when directly elected with a majority above 60 per cent.

In those brief and blissful moments SBY had the people’s mandate to reform the judiciary, start repairing the nation’s crumbling and congested infrastructure, and reinforce the ideology of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika [Unity in Diversity] by respecting minority rights.

But he dithered, and the opportunities drowned two months later; a tsunami hit Aceh in North Sumatra and all energies rightly focussed on recovery.

Now SBY has another chance.  He’s only 66, but already an eminence grise. He ruled for a decade without using the Army; Indonesia stayed intact while other Muslim-majority nations imploded; poverty was reduced on his watch and the economy strengthened. 

He has a real doctorate, an Order of Australia and shirtfronts of international awards. He’s also a visiting professor at the University of Western Australia.

 He speaks and even sings English. Unlike his successor Joko [Jokowi] Widodo who is reported to be indifferent to foreign affairs and uncomfortable among diplomats, SBY is so cosmopolitan he probably knows the best nasi goring in the world’s capitals. 

Indonesian electors remember him as a pedestrian president, but overseas he has the gravitas absent in the current leader.

SBY used his Perth address to challenge the neighbors to rediscover each other, though news reports emphasised his comments on commerce.

Business is hugely important but canny traders don’t need a retired politician to chant the mantra that Indonesia is big and getting bigger, so more mouths to feed.  Any entrepreneur unaware of this hard-set fact should start Googling Sits Vac.

If Indonesia hopes to lure more than the 265 Australian companies now in the archipelago [there are 360 in tiny Dubai, according to Trade Minister Andrew Robb] it must answer some blunt questions:

When will Indonesia develop a clear and stable policy on commodity imports?  When can foreigners invest knowing disputes will be settled legally, fairly and openly?  When will the corrosion of corruption be confronted with Singaporean resolve?

SBY is no longer leading man but he hasn’t left the stage.  As head of the fading and graft-tainted Democratic Party he knows how the gears grind in Jakarta’s political machine.

This creates an advantage of contacts, and a problem of impartiality.  Smart ex-leaders cut past ties to avoid the silent-phone curse that bedevils the power-famished, like Malaysia’s Mahathir Mohamad.

 Britain’s Tony Blair became a peace envoy in the Middle East while New Zealand’s Helen Clark headed for a top UN post in New York. 

Likewise an important new role awaits SBY away from Jakarta – as an international relationships guidance counsellor. Where better than with Australia where the shouting matches are a constant concern?

SBY’s Perth speech spoke of more people-to-people exchanges, particularly students.  Here he can do something; Australia is willing [more than 10,000 Indonesians are enrolled in secondary and tertiary education] though few Australians have found the right visas to open their tablets in Indonesian tutorials.  It seems Indonesian Immigration has a touch of xenophobia.

In the private meeting SBY was told that “some of Indonesia's smartest young people should be invited to work in Australia with tech start-ups to create innovation jointly between our two countries. Indonesia has some brilliant young minds.”

A splendid idea, with a rider:  “Australians need to understand Indonesia is not an enemy but rather a potential partner.”  To change that perception the Republic has to remove a serious impediment – capital punishment.

For five of SBY’s ten years in office he kept his nation on the right side of history.  When the firing squads reloaded, three of the four victims were murderers.

In April SBY abandoned a visit to Australia after drug traffickers were executed, citing a “disturbed relationship”.  Foreign Minister Julie Bishop described his words as “gracious” and evidence of disquiet among Jakarta’s elite.

So SBY has some moral authority, though tarnished, to champion abolishment.  Now he needs the courage to help Indonesia join the majority of nations that have freed themselves from the evils of primitive punishment.

There’s urgency here:  further shootings are promised.  If these go ahead the bullets will shred more than flesh.  There’ll be deep wounds to reputation and relationships. 

SBY might respectfully point that out to his successor using the most refined Kromo [high-level Javanese].  From his vantage point SBY can see how judicial murder demeans a government, dashes down the positives and nurtures ill-will.

Others have said this before; but the Elder Statesman’s baritone will be heard in the archipelago above any chorus of foreign human rights activists calling for - wishing for, praying for - a compassionate Indonesia.

(First published in New Mandala 9 October 2015)

##

EXECUTIONS MARK A SEISMIC SHIFT IN ATTITUDES

A shot of reality                                                           

The story so far:  To the boredom of electors who think otherwise, Australian politicians on the hustings pronounce that our big island continent is part of Asia.

They also add a moral instruction while largely ignoring their own advice:  We must get on better terms with the neighbours, particularly Indonesia. There’ll be bumps along the way but our special relationship will help us stay on track.

What speakers, what dates? Silly questions - this rhetorical routine has been part of the election cycle from way back when, as necessary as a candidate’s rosette.

The problem is this:  Voters haven’t bought the message.

Our deafness has been obvious for years. Academics have long warned about the decline in studying Indonesian – less than 1,000 are learning the language in their final school year.  Only 15 of the nation’s 43 universities teach the culture.

Clearly parents and their kids have ignored the politicians and decided that Chinese, Japanese or a European tongue will serve them better.

Almost a million Australians holiday in Hindu Bali every year – but only a fraction venture west into Muslim Java where the real power resides.

Investors also plug their ears to Canberra’s pleas to boost sales to our 250 million neighbours. Two-way trade is worth only $15 billion.  We do more business with Thailand and even more with Singapore.

The Lowy Institute for International Policy has tracked the decline of public trust.  The latest polls show  ‘feelings towards Indonesia, which have never been warm and have at times been characterised by wariness and even fear, have fallen to their lowest point in eight years’.

In his new book Condemned to Crisis? former diplomat Ken Ward argues that President Joko (Jokowi) Widodo is more indifferent than hostile. He wants his nation to be a world power but considers little Australia, with just one tenth of his citizens, too unimportant to help.

The brutal execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, despite pleas and petitions for clemency, can’t be dismissed as yet another passing judder in the relationship following spy allegations, asylum seeker push backs and live cattle export bans.

The gunshots didn’t just terminate the reformed drug smugglers’ lives; they also marked the end of the flawed reasoning that’s been our foreign affairs policy. We’ve seen the raw Indonesia and been horrified. Now we’re back on the real road.

Perth researcher Dr Greta Nabbs-Keller has read the map and been brave enough to tell the truth: 

‘There’s no special relationship between Canberra and Jakarta and there never was, precisely because the goodwill expressed toward Australia by individual Indonesian political leaders, diplomats and military officers has never really permeated Indonesia’s broader political elite or public consciousness.  Instead, there’s confluence of common interests and personal rapport between leaders at key junctures.’

That rapport is rare and common interests limited. Our history, culture, values, lifestyles and language owe little to Asia.  The praiseworthy migration program that has brought more than seven million new settlers since 1945 has included  Chinese, Vietnamese and Indians – but the greatest numbers have come from the UK and NZ. 

We remain a predominantly European nation eating foods, playing sports and following faiths rooted in another continent far away.  Our ‘special relationships’ are confined to the Anglosphere, particularly the UK and the US, which are also the major investors in Australia.

We claim to have good intentions and be part of the neighbourhood; but we’ll soon have 2,500 US marines in Darwin, just 830 kilometers from Kupang the capital of Nusa Tenggara province.  Imagine our reaction if the Chinese army set up a similar base on Indonesian soil.

 It’s depressing enough to give even the most one-eyed fan of Indonesia reason to turn elsewhere.  Yet despite these depressing facts there are solid practical and moral reasons to stay staunch, listen to the politicians’ messages and demand they hear their own voices.

Indonesia is neither about to move nor shrink.  It will remain our nearest neighbour and the world’s fourth most populous country with almost 90 per cent Muslim.

If we don’t know what’s happening next door, what the folk are thinking and doing, understand their concerns, how can we ever be mates?  And if we’re not – then what are the alternatives?

The time for appeasement has passed. We can’t ignore issues like Indonesia’s vile use of capital punishment, its corrosive corruption and seriously damaged application of the rule of law. We should be strong in condemnation, adding our voices to those in Indonesia who are equally appalled and seeking reform.

Our principles are not for sale, and Indonesia is unlikely to honour a nation that doesn’t plainspeak its values. Developing a respectful relationship built on a hardstand of facts is going to be a long, tough sweat – but the end result should be a safer world for our kids.

(First published in On Line Opinion, 23 July 2015.  For comment see: 

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17535

NOBLE DEAL, NOBEL PRIZE

BTW

Anything’s better than bullets         

EXCLUSIVE:  Rio de Janeiro, today, 2017:  President Joko [Jokowi] Widodo is to be nominated for the Nobel Prize for international leadership in developing new ways to handle the drug scourge.

The recommendation, which has yet to be officially announced, has been unanimously endorsed by the 22 heads of the Brazil-based Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP)

The Jakarta Post has obtained the statement which will accompany the announcement. This says that two years ago when President Jokowi opened his campaign to kill the drug trade, few believed he could persuade other nations that capital punishment was not the answer to trafficking and pushers.

The fact that more than 50 countries have since followed Indonesia makes President Jokowi an appropriate recipient, the statement continues.

Palace insiders claim the President’s epiphany followed a meeting with Virgin Airlines founder Sir Richard Branson.

Earlier appeals by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott to stay the execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran had apparently hardened the President’s resolve.

“The pleas angered the President,” said a senior aide speaking on condition of anonymity as he was unauthorized to comment.

“He reckoned Mr Abbott cared only for his two citizens, and not all those on death row or our 4.5 million addicts – that’s about the population of Sydney.

“With scores dying every day the electorate demanded decisive action. Mr Abbott offered no solutions. When he linked mercy to the 2004 tsunami aid Mr Jokowi turned off his phone. He’s a man who reacts to reason, not pressure.

“Sir Richard is a tough businessman, not a parochial politician.  He thinks laterally and invited the President to lead the world by finding new ways to tackle drugs.”

Palace sources confirmed a secret meeting had been held where the mega millionaire, who is a board member of the GCDP, offered well-researched facts from Commission archives.

Contacts present at the two-hour closed-door forum revealed that Sir Richard said that shortly before the Bali Nine smugglers were caught Indonesia had already executed three foreign drug traffickers.  This was widely known yet the Australians still went ahead; this fact made nonsense of the deterrent theory.

GCDP analysts had shown that addicts and mules are damaged people in hopeless financial and personal situations, unable to make sane choices.  They take risks whatever the punishment because every option is dreadful.  All believe they’re too smart to get caught.

The GCDP offered to fund a review led by Indonesian criminologists into the effectiveness of capital punishment as a deterrent and the government agreed to a moratorium.

The 178 page document is expected to be presented at a glittering event in the Presidential Palace next month. The buzz says Oprah Winfrey may be a guest.

Last night in London Sir Richard praised the Indonesian President as a man of courage and foresight. “I remember way back in 2015 thinking he was a stubborn guy, a foreigner to facts,” Sir Richard said.

 “What some considered intransigence was, in fact, a mask for the admirable Javanese traits of compassion and deep thinking. I told him ‘let’s kill the trade, not the traders’.  Anything’s better than bullets.”

The entrepreneur stayed tight-lipped on the report’s 17 recommendations. These are expected to include substituting long jail time for the death penalty and shorter spells for reformers who’ve expressed real remorse.

It’s no secret that there’ll be an International Center for the Prevention of Drug Trading at the University of Gadjah Mada; modern clinics in every province will help rehabilitate users.

A No Demand – No Supply social media campaign targeting drugs using teenspeak and. featuring celebs rather than uniformed government bosses will be launched.

Cash for these initiatives will come from a ten per cent levy on every packet of smokes sold.

A Palace spokesman refused to confirm or deny the report. “Let’s just wait and see,” he said.

However former President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said that if the story was true a Nobel Prize nomination was a great privilege.  He added:

“However the real honor belongs to the Indonesian people who have backed the President’s noble journey to make Indonesia a world leader in stamping out the drug trade while protecting human rights.” Duncan Graham

(First published in The Jakarta Post 12 April 2015)

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DESTROYING LIVES, REPUTATIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS

                                       

Carnival of capital punishment      

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 16^th 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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 First published in On Line Opinion 3 March 2015.  For comments see: 

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17141