COMMENT None dare call it
hypocrisy By Gary LaMoshi
DENPASAR, Bali - The Yiddish term
chutzpah is sometimes defined as killing
your parents and then demanding mercy as an
orphan. The Bali Nine drug-smuggling case is
teaching the world how to say chutzpah in
Australian.
The Bali Nine are Australians
in their teens to early 20s caught red-handed
transporting heroin from Southeast Asia to
Australia via Indonesia. Ringleaders Andrew Chan
and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death,
while the other seven received jail terms
ranging from 20 years to
life. On appeal last week, as expected,
Indonesia's Supreme Court upheld the two death
sentences.
The judges also increased the
sentences to death for four others, a move that
has shocked Australia. In essence, the top court
refused to recognize a distinction between the
masterminds of the smuggling scheme and the
"mules", who claim they were duped and then
coerced into taking part through threats to their
families back in Australia.
The higher
penalties come against a background of Indonesian
police flaunting their recent successes fighting
against drugs - a minor problem compared with
corruption - and increased Australian scrutiny of
Indonesia's justice system.
No BMWs in
justice There are many known cases of
corruption among Indonesia's prosecutors and
courts. Even as police have become more
professional since the end of Suharto's New Order
rule in 1998, their good work is often hindered or
even undone by these more unreformed arms of the
justice system.
Money and/or friends in
high places, foreign onlookers contend, can still
buy verdicts or charges against a foe. The parking
lot at the Attorney General's Office is still full
of BMWs that cost more than a decade's salary for
a prosecutor.
The Bali Nine trials have
been, by all accounts, honestly run. But even in
honest cases, the Indonesian legal system, built
on the Dutch colonial code, can produce odd
results. The more closely Australians scrutinize
the system, the more evidence they find of being
hard done by it.
The case of Schapelle
Corby got Australians to start paying attention.
Corby received a 20-year sentence for getting
caught with less than 5 kilograms of marijuana in
her boogie-board bag. By comparison, Tommy
Suharto, the son of former strongman Suharto, got
15 years for hiring assassins to wipe out a
Supreme Court judge.
More relevant to
Australia, alleged Jamaah Islamiya spiritual
leader Abu Bakar Ba'asyir got a mere 30 months for
conspiracy in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed
88 Australians among its 202 fatalities.
Last week, as word of the Supreme Court
decision came down against the Bali Nine
ringleaders, so did a meager eight-year sentence
against an accomplice in last October's Bali
attack that killed 23 people, including four
Australians. The terrorist defendant, Dwi
Widiarto, had also published a website outlining
the best places and ways to attack Westerners in
Jakarta.
Bowing to grassroots pressure,
the Australian government says it will ask the
Indonesia government for clemency in the Bali Nine
death sentences once all of the defendants' legal
appeals are exhausted. That arguably will qualify
Australia for the same level of hypocrisy as
Indonesia. It's also another example of the John
Howard government's seemingly inexhaustible
ability to get it wrong on its giant neighbor and
No 1 foreign-policy challenge.
Some
deaths more equal than others Foreign
Minister Alexander Downer says Australia will
appeal to Indonesia for clemency on the death
sentences because his country opposes the death
penalty. That's only partly true.
Australia, which has no death penalty,
opposes its application to Australians. But
Australia had no objections to the death sentences
handed out to three Bali bombers except to delays
in assembling the firing squad.
"Let me
make it very clear that every effort is being made
by this government, in cooperation with the
authorities in Indonesia, to ensure ... that those
responsible for these horrible deeds are
appropriately punished according to the full vigor
of Indonesian law," Howard said after an appeal by
the Bali bombers in 2004.
As part of its
branding of the 2002 Bali blasts that killed 202
people as Australia's September 11, Howard's
administration even paid for the victims' family
members to attend the trials and cheer when the
death penalties were announced.
The
verdicts against the Bali bombers - more
convictions of terrorists than the US and
Australia combined have netted through their
so-called "global war on terror" - put Australia
in a more difficult position regarding the
Indonesian legal system.
Legal experts
acknowledge that the investigation into the 2002
Bali bombing and subsequent trials were
professional and honest. And Australia and its
allies want to see these verdicts carried out.
Part of that process is selling both Indonesians
and interested foreigners on the legitimacy of the
Indonesian legal system. So it obviously puts
Canberra in a tricky position to turn around and
declare that the Indonesian legal system cannot be
trusted when it comes to Australians.
Clomp the line Supporting the
Indonesian legal system and security forces when
they round up suspected terrorists while
simultaneously pushing for legal reform is
obviously a fine line to walk. The US and
Australia have become major benefactors for the
Indonesian military and police - formerly a single
entity that was split as part of the reform era -
but evidence of deep-reaching reform remains
spotty.
Last week's appeal verdict also
marked the second anniversary of the bizarre
in-flight assassination of human-rights activist
Munir Said Thalib. Military intelligence's
fingerprints are all over the murder, but only the
alleged poisoner has so far been convicted, while
none of the key plotters have been charged (see Arresting decay in
Indonesia, July 7, 2005).
US
and Australian benefactors sometimes do more than
just hold their noses while distributing cash. In
the case of the 2002 ambush of a convoy from the
Freeport McMoRan mine that left two American
teachers dead, Washington's Federal Bureau of
Investigation appeared to conspire with the
military to dupe its chosen fall guys into
surrendering (see Papua puppetry leaves murders
unsolved, January 19).
Indonesia's so-called cooperation in this
case paved the way for the resumption of US aid to
the Indonesian armed forces, which had been
suspended because of Washington's concerns about
past human-rights abuses.
The US and
Australia argue that their engagement with the
security forces is the best way to promote
democratic values within these key institutions.
It's a dubious argument, however, given that there
seems to be all carrot and no stick. Furthermore,
this position ignores the fact that the West
continued to engage Indonesia for three decades
when it was one of the world's leading repressive
and corrupt autocracies.
Knack to
annoy Australian Prime Minister John
Howard's government hasn't lost its knack for
finding other ways to offend Indonesia. Australia
banged its tin ear most loudly this year by
granting asylum to 42 Papuan separatists.
Australia's quick decision in the case was
uncharacteristic of the government's general tight
scrutiny of asylum seekers. It also hit a raw
nerve in Jakarta, since Australia is a center of
Papuan separatist activism.
Since then,
Canberra has reaffirmed its commitment to
Indonesia's territorial integrity and disavowed
any support for Papuan separatists, though many
Australia-based grassroots organizations support
the cause. Australia wants Indonesia to understand
that nuance of a free society, as well as
accepting the legitimacy of the US and Australian
invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, countries that
Washington and Canberra claimed harbored people
who wanted to do them harm.
The Papuan
issue can't help remind Indonesians of East Timor,
which split off from Indonesia with the support of
many Australians. The Howard government's haste to
send troops to quell unrest in the now-independent
country couldn't help but revive Indonesian
suspicions about Australian designs on Timor. That
notion feeds on a misperception that Australian
troops went to Timor before the independence vote
on their own, rather than as peacekeepers under
the United Nations flag after the vote.
The problem with Australian public anger
over the Bali Nine is that they're blaming the
wrong government. Indonesian police nabbed the
Nine thanks to a tip from the Australian Federal
Police (AFP), fully aware that the suspects would
be subject to the death penalty. The AFP also
reportedly assisted local investigators in
building the case after the arrests, when there
could be no doubt that the death penalty was on
tap.
After encouraging Indonesia to nab
the smugglers, Australian protests about the
subsequent penalties give a new South Pacific
twist to chutzpah. If the Bali Nine case
teaches the Howard government the price of its
hypocrisy toward Indonesia and the world, then
these young people will not die in vain.
Gary LaMoshi has worked as a
broadcast producer and print writer and editor in
the US and Asia. Longtime editor of investor
rights advocate eRaider.com, he's also a
contributor to Slate and Salon.com, and a
counselor for Writing Camp
(www.writingcamp.net).
(Copyright 2006
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