ARTICLE ONE:
OPINION: The Bali Nine ringleaders traded in death by smuggling heroin and now must face the consequences
CAROLINE MARCUS
• THE SUNDAY MAIL (QLD)
JANUARY 18, 2015
BALI Nine smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran don’t deserve our sympathy; they deserve a
bullet.
Sukumaran, one half of the pair who masterminded the attempted smuggling of 8.3 kilograms of heroin with a
street value of $4 million into Australia in 2005, learnt last week his final bid for his life failed.
While Chan still waits to learn his fate, reports from Indonesia suggest he too will have his plea for clemency
rejected and Attorney-General H.M. Prasetyo revealed on Thursday night there were already plans to execute
the pair together.
Since news of Sukumaran’s imminent execution, there has been something of an outpouring of empathy for the
drug traffickers.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop sent her Indonesian counterparts a letter appealing on behalf of the criminals and
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has expressed his own personal desire to see their lives spared.
Australia’s official stance is to oppose the death penalty wherever its citizens may face it, but in cases as clearcut as this – where the accused have fully admitted guilt to an extremely serious crime, were aware of the
county’s penalties and premeditation is proven – it is not our place to meddle in another country’s laws.
Abbott is right to say he will not put our relationship with one of its closest neighbours in “jeopardy” over this
issue.
It is hard not to feel for Sukumaran’s mother, Raji, who told The Sunday Mail last weekend that she wished she
could exchange her own life for her son’s; after all, which parent wants to bury their child?
But the fact remains that neither Sukumaran nor Chan are victims deserving of our pity.
Instead, what about reserving sympathy for the millions of families around the world whose lives have been
torn apart by a loved one’s drug addiction?
Or thinking of the “human rights” of the poor parents of children like Georgia Bartter, the Sydney teenager who
tragically lost her life after taking ecstasy at a music festival in November?
It is too late for them to receive any mercy regarding their daughter’s life.
In the aftermath of the Bali Nine’s arrest, the Australian Federal Police copped some misguided criticism over
their role in the group’s capture.
Some argued that the police should have safely guided the drug-runners home instead of passing on a tip – said
to have come from the youngest mule Scott Rush’s own father Lee – to Indonesian authorities that Australians
may be attempting to traffic drugs out of Bali’s Denpasar Airport.
This is patently ridiculous; police are here to fight crime, not help criminals avoid being caught.
It should not pass unacknowledged that then AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty testified on behalf of Rush in his
appeal against his death sentence and was pivotal in the young man’s life being spared.
My own stance on capital punishment has been informed by the successful zero-tolerance approach of
Singapore – one of 40 countries that still use capital punishment – where I enjoyed an idyllic childhood in a
virtually drug and hard crime-free environment.
The city-state has hung hundreds of people for narcotics offences over the past two decades but remains
unapologetic, even if its Parliament did pass legal reforms two years ago allowing those sentenced to death over
drug offences to appeal in certain circumstances, such fully co-operating with authorities to disrupt trafficking
rings.
In 2012, seven years after the country hung Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van, Singapore’s Deputy
Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean, said the death penalty was a proven deterrent against drug crime in the country.
“We know that the mandatory death penalty has a deterrent effect because drug traffickers deliberately try to
keep the amounts they carry to below the capital punishment threshold,” Teo said.
What’s more, Singapore boasts among the lowest prevalence of both hard and “soft” drug abuse.
Meantime, back home, we’re losing our own war on the insidious drug trade.
Australia topped the United Nations’ latest World Drug Report with the highest proportion of ecstasy users in
the world, coming third in methamphetamines and fourth in cocaine.
On Tuesday, the new scourge of synthetic drugs claimed the lives of two men in Mackay, one of whom
collapsed and died after just a single puff of synthetic cannabis called “Full Moon”.
Authorities are battling the clock to legislate against these poisonous “legal” substances, as manufacturers come
up with creative ways to circumvent our laws.
It is up to individual countries to decide whether they endorse capital punishment, but when weighing up the
right to life of convicted drug traffickers against the rights of victims and the wider community’s welfare, it
should be a no-brainer where our sympathies must lie.
Caroline Marcus is a journalist with A Current Affair.
IMAGE:
ARTICLE TWO:
Murder the murderers- an eye for an eye.
Jan 30th 2015
I note there are no lefty tears and candle lit vigils for the 150 odd deaths (@ 1 fatality per 1,000
hits ) these scum have caused with the stuff they successfully imported before they were caught
on their THIRD known importation. This is mass murder ignored by the emotion driven zombies
while wailing for the drug lord scum that cause so much misery in the world.
Lets hope the Indonesians execute them within the next few days.
I have no compassion for those that deal in this poison.
They rolled the dice, they knew the risks, they took their chances, they lost.
Lets hope the Indonesians send the bill to their families for their executions (God knows they’ve
made millions from this trafficking).
Unfortunately I have experienced only too closely the results of drugs affecting my own children
and one of my partner’s kids affected by heroin.
He was once on the verge of being forced by a dealer to go to SE Asia to bring some drugs back
to pay for a drug debt.
The whole episode has been going for close to 20 years so far and really, while in a lull right
now, it’s still not over.
These dealers/smugglers destroy lives and should cop their whack.
Terry Ramsey, Eltham
ARTICLE THREE:
Call it what it is: state sanctioned murder
Date January 31, 2015
It is too simplistic to say “an eye for an eye”. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were not “drug
lords” “making millions” but young men who made a bad choice in organising an attempted shipment
of heroin to Australia. However, they did this for the "Mr Bigs" of the drug industry. These young men
have reformed and have been helping other prisoners, including through vocational training courses
they instigated in Kerobokan prison. Being on death row for 10years is punishment enough. Even the
prison's governor has advocated to commute their death sentences on the basis of their rehabilitation
and their work in helping other prisoners. Indonesia should commute the death sentences to an
appropriate custodial term and highlight the men's rehabilitation as an example to other prisons and
inmates of what can be achieved. State executions are murder and achieve nothing.
Kay Nicholson, Springvale