Carnival of capital punishment for Bali Nine

Then the weaponry experts calculating the trajectory of death.  They signed up for a career in military engineering, not a role in an abattoir.  If they’ve chosen the site carefully the sand or soil should be sufficiently friable to soak up the blood.

Organizing a killing is like planning a wedding - making sure nothing can go wrong in the Unhappiest Day of Our Lives.  This is the job of the lawyers and administrators who pledged to serve the community.

Participating in a project to kill wasn’t on their job description. When they lie with their wives in the joy of bringing new life into the world, will they falter because they’ve been cursed by helping end another?

How do all these brutalized people, the unwitting mechanics of murder following Jakarta’s orders, feel about capital punishment?  In other countries they’d sue the State for exposure to such corrosive horrors.

At the head of this long line of victims stands President Joko ‘Jokowi’ Widodo, leader of the world’s third largest democracy, once keen to make it the world’s greatest, elected just last year on a wave of hope for change.

 He could be an international statesman, a champion of human rights praised for his compassion and courage by eradicating capital punishment and accepting the wisdom of the 16^th President of the United States.

For when he was about Jokowi’s age Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in Washington where he said: “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice”.