Indonesia would face 'wave of revulsion' if it executes two members of Bali Nine
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Version 0 of 1. Australians would react with a “wave of revulsion” if two members of the Bali Nine drug smuggling syndicate were executed in Indonesia, a prominent campaigner against the death penalty has said. Australian Catholic University vice chancellor Greg Craven said there was “no difference physically” between the methods of the firing squad and the gunman responsible for the Sydney siege. Craven led calls for the Australian government to make new representations to the Indonesian government, after Jakarta indicated Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan would be executed together. Sukumaran, whose plea for presidential clemency was rejected last month, is not among the six death-row drug convicts listed for execution on Sunday. The president, Joko Widodo, has vowed to take a hardline stance on drug offenders but is yet to make a final decision on Chan’s appeal for clemency. Indonesia’s attorney general, HM Prasetyo, said on Thursday the Sydney pair would be dealt with together. “When a crime is committed by more than one person the execution must be conducted at the same time,” he said. “So Myuran will wait for his turn.” Chan has asked supporters to pray the Indonesian president will have a change of heart and spare his life and that of his fellow Bali Nine death row inmate, Myuran Sukumaran. Through a Facebook page managed by his family and friends, Chan said it was difficult news to hear. “Today has been one of the hardest days hearing that there are six human beings going to be executed within the next few days in Indonesia,” he wrote. “Myu and I are both trying to stay strong for our family and friends at this difficult time. “It is hard to think that our lives are in the hands of two men – Tony Abbott and Joko Widodo – who have the power to grant life and death. “Please pray for a change of heart for these men and for our families.” Craven said the situation for Sukumaran and Chan was “looking very, very bad” and he called on Australians to speak up against death by firing squad. Australians, he said, should not be “prepared to accept the moral burden of allowing two of our co-citizens to be blown apart”. “We need to understand there will be no difference physically between what happened in Martin Place and what will happen in an Indonesian jungle,” Craven told the ABC. “We couldn’t stop Martin Place; we can have a hell of a go at stopping this and that is a basic moral position. I think Australians have to face that. If we say OK, it doesn’t matter, these guys are drug runners, we don’t care, it’s not a case of letting the Indonesians do it – we’re allowing it to happen.” Asked whether the comparison to the terrorists was an insult to the Indonesian government, Craven said the victims in Paris and in Sydney were “the virtuous dead” and “more deserving – they weren’t drug runners and so on and so forth”. “It’s easy to draw that distinction,” he said. “But if you see a film of Andrew Chan having his heart exploded and if it goes wrong then having his brains blown out – because that’s what the regulations say you do – it’s not going to be any different.” Craven acknowledged the Australian government had made approaches to the Indonesians over the matter, but said it had been “far too muted” by declaring that it did not want the issue to affect relations between the two countries. In a media conference last week, Tony Abbott said it was his “profound hope” that the executions did not go ahead but added: “What I’m not going to do, though, is jeopardise the relationship with Indonesia.” Craven said: “It has to be the other way around. We don’t want to affect relations with Indonesia but the preservation of Australian lives is a fundamental matter of Australian importance,” he said. “If we don’t do that, I think we do the Indonesians the grave disservice of sending a muted message. Because there’s no doubt if this goes ahead, once the pictures come out, once people realise what’s happened, there will be a wave of revulsion, and we owe it to our friends in Indonesia to make that clear.” Matthew Goldberg, cofounder of the Mercy Campaign, called on Abbott “to go directly to the Indonesian president and plead for the lives of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran”. “There is cause for alarm and urgency but if acted upon then there remains hope for Andrew and Myuran,” Goldberg said. “What we are doing right now is documenting public support with an expectation that it is reinforced by political action.” Abbott is on leave, but the prime minister’s office referred to his comment last week that the government was “making urgent representations to the Indonesian government through the usual diplomatic channels”. “This is what we always do when Australians face the death penalty abroad,” Abbott told the Nine Network last Friday. “We oppose the death penalty for Australians, we oppose it at home – we oppose it abroad. “But I do have to say that it is incumbent upon us to respect the systems that other countries have, and while I would absolutely deplore the carrying out of the death sentence, we are an important partner of Indonesia, friendship with Indonesia is important for Australia, and I want that to continue.” The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said he could not say whether the government was doing enough because he had not had the latest briefing on the representations. “But certainly we don’t support the death penalty and we do believe that the government should do everything it can,” he said on Friday. Chan and Sukumaran were sentenced to death over a 2005 plot to traffic more than 8kg of heroin to Australia. |