D.J. Webb
Two Australian citizens face execution in Indonesia for drug smuggling, with current indications the pair will receive their lawful punishment on Wednesday (April 29th). They are part of a gang of drug smugglers known collectively as the Bali Nine, although the other members of the gang were sentenced to life imprisonment. Australian outrage has focused on the fact that Indonesia has the temerity to hand down the death penalty to criminals with Australian citizenship. Who do the Indonesians think they are?
Let’s forget the Bali Nine. What about the 250 million people of Indonesia? Indonesia is a sovereign, independent country, and 250 million do have their rights too, to their culture, to their chosen political process, to their chosen judicial process. There should be nothing compulsory about a developing nation signing up to Western-style light punishments.
Drug smuggling is controversial in libertarian circles: one solution to the problem is to legalize the trade. But that is tangential to what I’m addressing in this article, which is Australia’s imperious treatment of Indonesia. Drug smuggling is illegal in Indonesia, and any Australian citizens convicted should get the same sentence as everyone else. To argue anything else would be to demand the end of the rule of law in Indonesia.
For months now, the Australian government has been interfering in the judicial process in Indonesia, demand extra reviews of the penalty and so forth. Australia’s disgraceful foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has made scurrilous claims that Indonesian judges demanded a bribe to commute the death sentences to imprisonment. It seems likely, however, that the political leadership of Indonesia would not allow the local judicial system to be undermined by Australia, and so no payment would be sufficient to commute these sentences. Indonesia points out that Australia has advanced no evidence of corruption in the case. Australia has even leant on the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon to call for a moratorium on the death penalty in Indonesia. Curiously, it seems the UN denies the right to sovereignty of Indonesia.
Neither of the two men is really Australian! One, Myuran Sukumaran is a Sri Lankan Tamil born in Australia, and the other, Andrew Chan, is Chinese, the Australian-born son of Chinese immigrants to Australia. They were convicted in 2006 as part of a multinational gang trying to smuggle heroin into Australia. There are other similar cases in the pipeline. Another convict, Serge Atlaoui, has French citizenship, provoking French threats of “consequences” unless the local rule of law is traduced in Indonesia.
It is time countries like Australia let go. Indonesia is not a colony. It is not a country that really, by rights, ought to be under Western control. I defer to no-one in my admiration of the British Empire, but the Empire is in the past and we must not continue to make fools of ourselves on the world stage by behaving as if we (the Western countries) will forever be in a position to exercise control over the domestic policies of non-Western nations. Australia must let go of the concept of Empire. It must allow it to recede into history.
My sole hesitation over the process is that nine years have passed since conviction, and it would be better for sentence to be executed swiftly, without allowing the passage of many years. Be that as it way, this is Indonesia’s judicial system. Execute the pair on Wednesday, Indonesia, and tell the Australians to take a hike.