Death in an island jungle
· EDITORIAL
· HERALD SUN
· MARCH 11, 201512:00AM
THE torment experienced by Bali Nine prisoners Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran is unimaginable.
Their hopes that their legal appeals might save them from a firing squad were dashed when they were sent to Indonesia’s execution island.
They now sit in specially constructed isolation cells in a prison where they can hear the rattle of gunfire as the firing squads that will put them to death practise their skills.
They know the coffins built to receive their bullet-ridden bodies are ready in another part of the prison.
Their transfer by armoured personnel carriers and an aircraft surrounded by fighter jets, while the Bali police chief posed with his hand on a fearful Chan’s shoulder, was a crude show of force and a misjudgment.
The insensitivity shown by the smirking police chief was equalled on the ABC’s Q&A on Monday night when Germaine Greer asked Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop if she would reveal her breasts to gain a reprieve for the two Australians.
Ms Greer, it seems, will say anything to maintain her personal notoriety.
She has done nothing to help two condemned men. Sukumaran and Chan do not deserve to have their fate made a talk-show joke.
The Indonesian Attorney-General has at least announced that legal challenges to their execution will be allowed to run their course.
What may be their final appeal to the courts is likely tomorrow, although it is an appeal on a previous decision by the courts that was thrown out when the court said it had no jurisdiction. There is also a challenge before a judicial commission that the process under which Chan and Sukumaran were convicted was corrupt and open to bribery.
What has become a form of torture in dashing and then raising their hopes continues.
There is no doubt of the guilt of Chan and Sukumaran, who stood to profit from their attempts to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin into Australia.
There is no doubt they would be in prison in Australia rather than facing the death penalty in Indonesia had the Australian Federal Police not alerted authorities in Bali.
Their almost inevitable deaths rest with President Widodo, who says he would consider abolishing the death penalty if this was what the Indonesian people wanted.
But that would be too late for Sukumaran and Chan as President Widodo continues to insist that the death penalty is the law and he will carry it out.
The executions will not take place until this happens, which shows that President Widodo may have responded to the repeated calls for clemency by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Ms Bishop.
There is confusion over just how many of the prisoners sentenced to die with Chan and Sukumaran death will face their executioners.
Some of the other prisoners still have appeals before the courts and not all of them have been transferred to the island.
What is happening is macabre and inhuman.
Other Bali Nine drug smugglers have been sentenced to death and then reprieved.
What should happen is for President Widodo to declare a moratorium on the death penalty while the Indonesian people are given an opportunity to consider an end to a barbarous practice.
The deaths of Chan and Sukumaran serve no purpose.