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Indonesian trial for
Australia
By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY - "Twelve brutal Indonesian
troopers armed with high-caliber rifles. Schapelle
Corby, 27, an innocent and defenseless girl from
Queensland, Australia, shackled to a pole. This is
Indonesia's concept of a 'justice' system. Evil
triumphs when good people do nothing. Don't shoot
Corby!"
Days after this shrill appeal
appeared on a website last month, 60,000 people
had signed a petition seeking clemency for the
young beauty student, who has become a perplexing
symbol of the vexed relationship between Australia
and its closest Asian neighbor, Indonesia.
"Be as disruptive as possible without
hurting anyone," advises the website, outlining a
plan of action that ranges from mass protests
outside Indonesian consulates to boycotting firms
that do business in that country and canceling
holidays to Bali, the beach resort where Corby was
caught in October with 4.1 kilograms of marijuana.
The noise levels have risen steadily since
she was sentenced last week to 20 years in jail.
Travel agencies have reported a holiday backlash.
Charity drives for aid to tsunami-struck Indonesia
are coming up short because donors no longer want
their hard-earned cash going to that country. On
Tuesday, someone sent a suspicious white powder,
thought to contain toxic spores, to Jakarta's
embassy in Canberra, forcing its evacuation.
Another packet of powder arrived on Friday at the
office of Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.
There are scores of largely anonymous
Australians awaiting trial on drug offences in
Asian jails, including 11 more in Bali and two on
death row in Singapore. On Wednesday, a Sydney man
of Vietnamese origin was given the same sentence
as Corby in Vietnam for sending heroin back home
through the post; the story barely made the
evening news.
So why the obsession with
Corby?
She is young, beautiful and
charismatic. Her cell is dark, foul-smelling and
overcrowded, a forbidding place in a land that few
Australians understand. The language swirling
around her is impenetrable, the judiciary
difficult to comprehend. For many it is a simple
case of good against evil, of supporting the
underdog, the innocent victim of a corrupt and
untrustworthy system. It's black and white.
And there is the crunch. Are Australians,
with a predominantly European heritage and Western
outlook, letting their latent fear of being
swamped by populous Asia rule their emotions over
what should have been a routine court verdict?
Opinion polls suggest that the main issue
is not Corby's guilt but her perceived inability
to get a fair trial in a country that is still
associated, in the minds of many Australians, with
the excesses of the Suharto era, human-rights
abuses in East Timor and West Papua, crooked
police and banana-state politics.
One
survey, conducted over two days by a radio station
in Corby's home state of Queensland, found that
almost half of the respondents believed the court
verdict was an injustice; yet less than a quarter
were convinced of her innocence and believed she
should be freed.
The credibility gap with
the legal proceedings began to emerge during the
media frenzy that accompanied Corby's initial
arrest, when Australia's lively tabloids gained
unusually open access to the evidence that was
being assembled against her - a point that itself
tends to undermine allegations of a conspiracy to
have her convicted.
It was revealed that
the package containing the marijuana, hidden
inside a boogie board bag that she admitted
owning, had not been finger-printed, a move that
might have supported the defense's contention that
the drugs had been planted - probably by baggage
handlers who were part of a smuggling syndicate -
while she was in transit from the Gold Coast.
Later, the panel of three judges refused
to accept testimony from several defense witnesses
who claimed to have knowledge of the smuggling
ring, which the Australian police have since
acknowledged has been under investigation for more
than 12 months.
Newspapers were quick to
seize on rumors that bribes had been offered to
influence the trial's outcome. Although these were
never substantiated, the lonely ordeal of a young
woman away from home, in essence, a human interest
story that should quickly have faded from the
public consciousness, was transformed into a tale
of Third World oppression.
After she was
sentenced, comparisons were made with the light
penalties handed out to the perpetrators of the
Bali bombings, which killed more than 80
Australians. And some elements of the media
alluded to a betrayal of trust by Indonesia after
Australia's magnanimous gesture in donating more
than A$1 billion (US$756 million) to help the
victims of the December 26 tsunami in Aceh.
There were emotive headlines such as
"Nation's Fury", "Alone and Afraid", "Indonesia
Must Look At Grotesque Anomalies", "Horrors Await
in Jail Hellhole" and "Share of Hell in Grotty
Jail". When prosecutors announced they would
appeal for a tougher sentence - the maximum term
is execution - things began to turn nasty.
"Day of Outrage to Show Our Disgust",
screamed one banner. Another called for a "Day of
Hate", and a third, demanding a business boycott
of Indonesia, trumpheted: "Let's Hurt Bali In The
pocket".
Away from the hysterics, it has
been accepted by diplomats and lawyers familiar
with the Indonesian legal system, both in
Australia and Indonesia, that Corby did get a fair
trial, even though it followed a pattern that
would have been unfamiliar to most Australians.
Unlike Australia's British tradition of
common law, the Indonesian judiciary uses a civil
law inherited from former colonial ruler Holland,
with its roots in French and German legal
statutes, that does not use a jury system and
encourages a more active involvement by judges in
proceedings.
According to Associate
Professor Tim Lindsey, director of the Asian Law
Center at the University of Melbourne, civil law
systems are regarded as "inquisitorial" in nature,
while common law is "adversarial", a distinction
that may have confused observers of the Corby
case.
"This means that in common law
systems the judge acts as an impartial referee
while the parties present their witnesses in an
attempt to convince a jury or, in most cases, the
judge," said Lindsey. "The judge generally does
not ask questions of witnesses and is usually
active only in enforcing the rules of evidence and
procedure.
"In an inquisitorial system,
however, the judges conduct an enquiry into the
truth of what occurred - that is, the facts behind
the legal issues in dispute. In some civil law
systems, the judges may even dominate the hearing
to such an extent that lawyers are left with few
questions to ask at all," he said.
Hence,
the judges in the Corby case were able to make
rulings on the admission of evidence that probably
could not have occurred in an Australian court.
They were empowered to decide which witnesses
would be called, and could even call for outside
testimony that had not been requested by either
side.
There is little doubt that the
Indonesian judiciary has an image problem: it was
rated the most corrupt of 12 Asian countries in a
survey of expatriate businessmen released by the
Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk
Consultancy just as the trial was concluding.
But most Indonesian corruption occurs in
commercial rather than criminal cases, and has
more to do with the business mentality of gaining
an advantage in markets or contracts than any
widespread effort to influence judgments.
Yet, even with the different judicial
approach, it is unlikely the outcome would have
been fundamentally different if the trial had been
held in Australia. The bag containing the
marijuana might have been fingerprinted, but the
result would hardly have been conclusive: any
self-respecting smuggler knows the value of using
gloves.
Criminal lawyers have said that no
Australian court would have agreed to admit
evidence on hearsay regarding the alleged airport
baggage handlers syndicate. The chief defense
witness was a convicted rapist who overheard a
conversation between two fellow inmates while in a
remand cell.
In any case, police have said
the smuggling ring was dealing in heroin, not
marijuana, which has long been considered too
bulky to move in large shipments. (Heroin, which
can easily be diluted, brings far greater rewards
for a fraction of the quantity.)
As with
any trial of this nature, Corby's prospects of
avoiding a conviction rested on her ability to
distance herself from the boogie board bag and its
contents; she was unable to do so. The police
account of her arrest even has Corby confessing at
one point to having brought in the marijuana for
her own use, though she later denied having made
such an admission.
None of this is likely
to assuage the outpouring of anger among her
supporters as the judiciary meets again to
consider Corby's appeal against her sentence, or
weaken the resolve of the Indonesian police, who
believe it was too lenient. If their appeal is
successful, Corby could face a life term, or even
be executed.
On the protest agenda are a
national campaign to coincide with Corby's
birthday next month and a more vigorous assault on
business and tourism links, including a publicity
blitz to encourage the 300,000 Australians who
travel to Bali each year to stay home.
Bookings for Bali have already fallen by
20% since the trial build-up began, according to
trade magazines. While many expect this to be only
a temporary trend, the drawn-out nature of the
appeals process means relations between the two
countries will not settle down for months,
possibly even years.
Ironically, the
Australian government is currently providing
funding for the retraining of Indonesian judges as
part of a program of "democratizing" the judicial
system that is intended to make it more
accountable and independent, a process it is keen
to see continued.
Canberra might also want
to devote some resources to making its own
countrymen more aware of the big archipelago that
lies just to the north, before a catalogue of
misconceptions and media intrigue becomes a real
diplomatic albatross.
An opinion survey
published by the respected Lowy Institute earlier
this year found a level of alienation between
Australians and Indonesians that is extraordinary
for two neighbors with so many shared security and
economic interests.
Asked to rate how they
felt about various countries within Asia and in
other regions, only 52% of respondents said they
felt positive toward Indonesia, and 42% were
negative. They ranked Indonesia just above a host
of unstable Middle East nations, including Iraq
and Iran, which suggests it may not be just one
person who is on trial in this case.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.)
Alan Boyd, now based in Sydney,
has reported on Asia for more than two
decades. |
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