Australians are no longer under any illusion about how Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan will be killed by Indonesia if their latest legal appeals fail. There’s no need to rehash the gory detail. But if Indonesia gets its way, the legacy of the Bali duo will surely be that the campaign to spare them has focused our attention, if only momentarily on the need to get rid of what is, on the evidence, a pointless practice.
State sanctioned killing, by whatever means, is easy to embrace at a distance. Who hasn’t felt or said “if someone killed my child” or “if my child fell victim to drugs”, I’d want the murderer, the drug peddler hanged from the streetlights? But it’s more difficult to accept the death penalty when faces, life stories and families are attached to the condemned. And it’s even more difficult to understand its use when you consider the evidence.
Amnesty International has looked at 26 countries which have the death penalty for drug crimes and found that in those which have actually carried out executions, it is not aware of any evidence of a “decline in trafficking which could be clearly attributed to the threat or use of the death penalty.” It’s not a deterrent.
Given 90 per cent of executions are carried out in Asia and many young Australians will make the trek across the continent and with it, the obligatory mistakes of youth, convincing death penalty nations the evidence isn’t stacked in favour of the aims they claim execution achieves is a matter of urgency.
Right now, it is easy to feel a tug at the heartstrings. Every twist and turn in Sukumaran and Chan’s long road to death is being reported in at times excruciating detail, with live timeline reporting and bits of information gleamed by the swelling number of Australian reporters camped off Nusa Kambangan, waiting for Jakarta to send down the order. But for how long after the deed is done will Australians remember these two men?
How much of the life and death of Van Nyugen do we remember without the aid of Google? Singapore executed him in 2005 when he was 25. He was just 22 when he attempted to traffic heroin through Singapore.
Yet how often do we think about this kid who thought he’d found a quick way to make money to pay off his twin brother's debts? How often do we wonder how his mother is faring, that frail women barely able to walk out of Changi Prison, held up by her surviving son after she said her final goodbye to his brother? How long did it take for the outrage to subside and the lure of chili crab and the shopping delights of Singapore’s glittering airport to return?
Once the gruesome reporting from Nusa Kambangan is replaced by breathless blow by blow details of the latest threat of a leadership spill, or the most recent twist in some reality television show or the pregnancy of a B grade soapy star, how enticing will it be for us to glance back over our shoulder to that moment in time when our nearest big neighbour killed two Australians who’d made a mistake?
At the moment, there are sporadic social media calls for a boycott of Bali, spurred on by a clearly outraged Foreign Minister who can’t fathom why Indonesia won’t listen to any of her arguments to spare Sukumaran and Chan. Whether a boycott is feasible, or will stop Indonesia using the death penalty are doubtful. Surely the best way forward will be to harness community sadness and anger to keep alive the campaign to abolish the death penalty globally. The real test of Julie Bishop, despite or perhaps because of all her hard work to save the Bali duo will be how well she and the government in which she serves manages to do this.
The fight to abolish the death penalty isn’t cheery or sexy or full of political intrigue. The push by NGO’s, human rights activists and diplomat’s for the global adoption of a moratorium on executions, is a largely unreported story. To those who ask why we should want to know more – just keep reminding yourself that Van Nyugen could have been your son or neighbour or best friend's kid, who made a mistake, reformed and was then killed.
Monica Attard is a Sydney based freelance journalist and former ABC foreign correspondent and senior broadcaster.
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