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Lots ideas and thoughts here.
For the record I am opposed to the death sentence except for crimes against children and arsonists. Even still I abhor the death sentence for deterrent value. It does not work and never has worked as a deterrent.
That said, and having travelled through Asia a lot, ones arrival into Indonesia, it clearly sign posted that the death penalty is applied for drug trafficking. Only idiots think they can do this and get past the guards. Some might get past but the odds are not good.
Yes trafficking is brought on because of prohibition and there are all sorts of arguments for removing prohibition, but that is not likely to happen in a hurry and it will require all sorts of controls and monitoring for addicts etc. So for now we live in the prohibition paradigm.
I find it hard to believe though that murder, child molesting and terrorism in Indonesia fails to regularly attract the death penalty regularly and yet lots of young people are on death row for trafficking drugs. It's an odd thing to enforce and quite frankly the Indonesians should be doing something about the producers of hard core drugs rather than address the middle men. I know from experience that bribing officials is rife in Indonesia. Even travelling from one part of the country to another requires a gratuity in some parts.
An interesting notion I heard today is that the only time Aussies get up in arms about Indonesia having the death penalty is when an Aussie is about to die. In between those times we say very little as a country and don't appear to be committed to the cause. And; I have to say I agree with this sentiment. Many people die in the mean time.
Should they have been spared? Well from all accounts they had been rehabilitated and that is surely the primary reason for incarceration; but they were not incarcerated, they were sentenced to death and held in custody awaiting that sentence. It's a subtle distinction, they were already dead men walking. So in that case it was up to the President to spare them. Should he have spared them? Well from our point of view, it is an absolute. However, the Presidents position is very precarious and politically he could not be seen as being soft and that might have brought on a coup from hardliners had he decided to spare them. It might not have either. It might have started to the beginning of social reform in the their society. We shall never know. Also bear in mind that Corby was released recently and that might have played a part in the Presidents decision.
I feel for the families who must now bear this sorrow and pain. Their pain will last for many years to come. I have no doubt that Barlow and Chambers family are still grieving the loss of them.
I think Australia ought to tread carefully here and not say too much or act too hastily. A lot rides on our relationship with Indonesia and there is more to all this than an outrage of the operation of their laws which some people chose to ignore.
That all aside I think they should have been given clemency because they had truly worked hard on giving something back and perhaps their sentence could have been commuted to a life sentence. A disappointing outcome altogether.
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