I am Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo

Soon, maybe in a few weeks, maybe longer, the Republic of Indonesia will execute two Australian heroin traffickers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

They are guilty. Even their cheer squad admits that. And that cheer squad includes Brisbane’s Courier Mail, given last week’s editorialising. The Bali Nine, the paper wrote, as the group became known, faced trial, were charged with violation of Articles 82(1)(a) and 78(1)(b) of Law No. 22 of 1997, were found guilty and given sentences of varied imprisonment and, in the cases of Chan and Sukumaran, death by firing squad.

The paper continued:  “a series of appeals by the convicts and state prosecutors saw sentences upgraded – four others were sentenced to death – and then overturned again and reinstated to lesser long prison terms. Throughout all this the Chan and Sukumaran death sentences remained, with their last hope being a presidential pardon”.

The convicted offenders were caught red handed. They (amongst others in different cases) challenged the constitutional validity of at the Constitutional Court (the Mahkamah Konstitusi Republik Indonesia) claiming that the provision of Law No. 22 of 1997 is inconsistent with the Articles 28A and 28I (1) of the 1945  Constitution, as well as Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR), which is an international human rights law.

In time the MKRI rejected their appeal on the grounds that foreigners cannot challenge the domestic Constitution. Strike one.

Contrary to arguments presented by the defence, the court also found that provisions of Indonesian statutes can indeed restrict the right to life under the Constitution. Strike two. 

After the failure of challenging the validity of the death sentence under Law No. 22 of 1997, Chan and Sukumaran took the matter to the Supreme Court asking for a judicial review. Strike three.

There is no question they received a fair trial and there is no doubt that had they succeeded in their wickedness and flooded the streets (anywhere, be it in Denpasar, Melbourne or Sydney) with their 8.3 kg of heroin, then an inestimable number of lives would have been forever destroyed as a result of using, dealing, overdosing on heroin, or given the ghastly nature of the drug industry, or being killed.

Now, after more than nine years of enjoying Indonesian hospitality, the fat lady is about to sing. In Bahasa Indonesia no less.

None of this should be a surprise to anybody. Both Canberra and Jakarta have gone and continue to go to enormous lengths to warn travellers that the price for the crime of drug running is death. Hey, even Indonesia’s new president, Joko “Jokowi” Widodo, elected in mid 2014 explicitly campaigned on a platform of showing zero tolerance to drug smugglers. He said the drug trade claims “too many Indonesian lives and trafficking foreigners need the shock therapy of execution to deter others from travelling to tourist destinations like Bali to buy and smuggle narcotics”.

Most nations agree that drug trafficking poses a major threat to the international community and that the scourge of drugs weakens the moral fibre of a society.

Where nations differ is in their response to those causing the problems. Putting aside the debate as to whether capital punishment deters others, 32 countries and territories including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States, choose to remove the cancer of drugs by killing persons involved in the trade; thereby at the very least, extinguishing the likelihood that they will re-offend. The more “sophisticated” Western elites apparently believe the taxpayer (Australian? Indonesian?) should be milked for say 25 years at $60,000 per year to house, clothe and feed each one of these offenders.

Many in Australia advocating for leniency for Chan and Sukumaran believe they know better than the Indonesians and that the West’s values system must prevail over those of our northern neighbour. Some in Australia’s media  have gone to great lengths to depict the convicts not as folk whose trade results in misery for many as it enriches the few, but as “loving (rugby) league, finding Christ, contributing to the positive morale at their gaol and acting like a “larrikin”. Clearly some reporters are yet to arrive at the ugly coalface of drug dependency and the harm it does.

Apologists for the drug runners are relying on two flimsy tactics: either head locking Indonesia into kowtowing to certain United Nations conventions or enlisting mischief making woefully partisan organizations such as Amnesty International to their cause. Neither will work. And for good reasons.

Let’s look at these in turn.

When it comes to United Nations’ conventions, three specific international treaties influence how individual countries respond to drug offenses across South East Asia, including Indonesia.

The UN established three international Drug Control and Enforcement Treaties:

(1) The 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs;

(2) The 1971 U.N. Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and

(3) The U.N. Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

The purpose of these drug control and enforcement treaties is to “decimate the market for drugs. Do-gooding prisoners’ advocacy groups focus mostly on the 1988 U.N. Convention when they want to beat up on sovereign states applying their own laws.

While the target of this convention is global drug trafficking as its main goal by requiring all members of the United Nations to pass domestic statutes that include drug trafficking on the lists of the criminal offenses, critics of the death penalty expect uniform implementation of anti-drug policies worldwide and with most nations rejecting the death penalty, naturally critics expect independent minded states like Indonesia, Singapore and the United States to lower the bar, amend their ways and fold like a pack of cards to the demands of the “enlightened” West.

Fat chance.

Bluntly put, these guys are just wasting the (Indonesian) courts’ time. Indonesia’s judiciary has already stated that its death penalty provisions do not conflict with its international (1988) obligations and therefore any petitioner’s claims are without foundation. Furthermore, judges also found that foreign petitioners do not have legal standing in such matters.

Pretty cut and dried isn’t it?

Failing to convince Indonesia to yield to the UN and in the process force them to flush their own domestic laws down the toilet, some Australians (including politicians and the clergy) have resorted to reeling in the likes of Amnesty International, an organization whose star has fallen far after it emerged that in the United Kingdom that AI collaborated with Britain’s most famous supporter of the Taliban, So polarizing to the U.K. public and so toxic to AI staff was the relationship between AI’s leadership and Begg that one of AI’s senior staff, resigned in disgust. Salman Rushie chimed in as well deploring AI consorting with the former Gitmo inmate.

When it comes to AI, few Australians will forget the sludge pumped by the NGO, which on Prime Minister John Howard’s watch, infamously excoriated  Australia’s human rights record, compared Howard to Zimbabwe’s dictatorial Robert Mugabe and simultaneously gave a free pass to North Korea.

The very same AI that had the gall to condemn Howard’s portrayal of some “asylum seekers” (really, illegal, uninvited arrivals) as a “threat to national security”, assiduously lobbied the Department of Immigration to grant residency to Man Haron Monis (also known as Sheikh Haron and Mohamed Hassan Manteghi).

Enough said.

Perhaps well-meaning Australian abolitionists should be more prudent about the company they keep.

South East Asia is a leading drug producing area. With this come great responsibilities for governments. Not least, solving narcotic-trafficking and illicit use. Anti-narcotic laws of Indonesia along with that of her ASEAN siblings allows for preventive detention, the seizure of major drug traffickers and the confiscation of passports of convicted drug traffickers. Therefore it is not surprising that in this region, capital punishment is commonly used as a method to keep the narcotic drug trade under control.

Everybody visiting or even stopping over for a day in Denpasar, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore can see that the region’s cultures and traditions differ from those of the West. Surely they are they no less valid than those of the West.

The laws in effect in such countries must be judged with those cultures in mind.

For the record, some twenty two years ago, in 1993, in Bangkok at an Asian regional meeting, pursuant to General Assembly resolution 46/116, South East Asian nations refused, that’s right, refused, to accept what passes for so-called “international human rights standards” in Asia.

Jokowi has been consistent all along. He considers drug crimes to be a clear and present danger to the republic’s national security and social fibre. Drug trafficking is a very serious crime in Indonesia he contends, in which the death penalty is proportionate to the gravity of the offense.

Australia may well oppose the death penalty wherever and wherever it is imposed and as sure as night follows day polite objections are lodged.  We are free to voice our opinions in a friendly, non-threatening manner. We are not free to dictate.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has done as many in the media, parliament and lobby groups expected. He has opposed the death penalty ad nauseam, chronically badgering the Indonesians and when he wasn’t, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop put in her 2 rupiah’s worth.

But neither Abbott nor Bishop will tear asunder the deep bilateral ties we now enjoy, if the appeals for clemency are not accepted.

Amen to that.

Assuming President Jokowi and the Directorate of Corrections both figuratively and literally stick to their guns, the world will be a better place. Less Indonesians and Australians will be condemned to commence an addiction to heroin. And less will deepen their dependence on that narcotic.

Thanks to principled leadership in Jakarta, the world will soon be rid of two heroin smugglers.

Potential drug runners will now think twice before embarking on such a depraved activity when their plans involve travel to Indonesia.

And if future drug runners try their luck and come up short, I am sure there are plenty of palm trees in Indonesia, which the authorities will happily tie them to before dawn and before delivering justice.

The island of Bali has seen the tragedy of narcotics afflict its youth, not only as a by-product of foreign drug traffickers, but also as an evil in the form of home grown dealers coming down from Java.

Few tears will be shed on the beaches of Bali for Chan and Sukumaran.

Saya Jokowi. I am Jokowi.