I am Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo

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.