Bali Nine drug runners Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are on track to be executed by firing squad during the first half of this year. A letter rejecting Sukumaran’s presidential clemency bid was hand-delivered to Bali's Kerobokan prison by an Indonesian government official earlier this month. A similar outcome is expected for Chan before a date is set for the pair to be executed together.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott stressed that Australia would make ‘the strongest possible representations’ on behalf of Sukumaran. ‘Australia opposes the death penalty. We oppose the death penalty for Australians at home and abroad’.
Abbott deserves praise for his focus on our abhorrence of the death penalty, and his avoidance of the argument that they are model prisoners who have turned their lives around, even though the evident truth of that provides a solid basis to urge the granting of presidential appeals for clemency. Such appeals make the decision to take or spare human life an act of political will, and going down this track is an uncomfortable compromise for those who believe that the death penalty is wrong per se. As a value, human life becomes relative to President Widodo’s otherwise commendable political will to combat drug addiction. It is no longer absolute.
It should be stressed that any acceptance of the death penalty as an option, is incompatible with upholding human life as an absolute value. The image of Indonesia as a mature and civilised nation is diminished, and the actions of an Indonesian state firing squad are different to those of Islamic State executioners only by degree. They signal an Indonesia turning back to a barbaric past evidenced in atrocities in East Timor (with Australian Government acquiescence), and the disregard for human life that accompanied Sukarno’s demise as depicted in the 2012 film The Act of Killing, again without opposition from Australia.
Where Abbott does not do himself any credit is in his qualification that Australia’s ’strongest possible representations’ on Sukumaran’s behalf will be subject to the need to avoid jeopardising Australia’s relationship with Indonesia. Not only does it suggest that Australia can accommodate Indonesian state barbarism (as it did under Whitlam). It is also an unequivocal declaration that opposing the death penalty is less important than the effort to stop asylum seeker boats from reaching Australian waters. We can recall the Abbott Government’s insistence in its early days in office that the boats must be stopped even if it upsets Indonesia. Indonesia was duly upset, but relations bounced back, as they always do. There is no reason to fear our long term good relations with Indonesia could not withstand strong and unqualified opposition to the death penalty.
Further, we need to put the Australian Government’s accommodation of Indonesia in the context of its support for America’s effort to disable Islamic State and its barbarous practices. Human life as an absolute is a core value we are seeking to uphold on behalf of many innocent populations in the Middle East. If we act on our belief that killing human beings is not OK in these distant lands, why can’t we take a more decisive stand against the taking of human life on our doorstep?