The laws in other lands reflect cultural differences. Photo / AP
The laws in other lands reflect cultural differences. Photo / AP
Opinion by
I went to sleep half expecting to wake up to the sound of gunshots. That's ridiculous, of course. The executions were more than 500km away. Still, it's surreal knowing you're in the same country as six people counting down the hours until they're taken out and shot.
The next day, it was all everyone was talking about. We tourists hadn't expected it would happen at midnight. We didn't think any countries still used firing squads.
The guy taking us on the tour of Bali sat in the front passenger seat of the car. We told him about the New Zealander in jail near our resort. We explained how Antony de Malmanche says it wasn't his fault, that he was duped by someone else, but authorities would have to believe his story to save him from being shot. Because, that's what may happen to him. And for us, that's hard to accept because, back home, even if his story wasn't true, we wouldn't shoot de Malmanche.
"In New Zealand," the tour guide asked, "you don't kill them for drugs?"
He didn't seem surprised to hear that no, a bag of P won't get even the worst reoffenders killed.
Public opinion in Indonesia seems to support the death penalty for convicted drug mules like Schapelle Corby. Photo / AP
Well, for nothing, of course, we replied. We haven't used capital punishment since 1957. At that he seemed surprised.
"Not for murder even?"
Not even for that. And I will admit I felt a little smug revealing that. Showing off our sophisticated judicial system with its balance of punishment and rehabilitation, justice and forgiveness, made me feel just a little proud.
I expected the tour guide to want to know more, to be keen to better understand our clearly superior ideas. Capital punishment is abhorrent and so, surely, the Indonesian people will be embarrassed at their Government's brutality. But no, our tour guide was unapologetic.
"Executing the drug bosses," he explained, "that's fair. The workers at the bottom, no, but the bosses, yes. It saves our young people. It saves them from drugs."
In Indonesia, they call the drug trade an "extraordinary crime". The risk of death is supposed to deter anyone from trying to make a buck off smack, but it doesn't work. Drug-running foreigners turn up anyway. They move in and live the high life. They rub it in the locals' faces, driving luxury cars down narrow streets along which they - the Balinese - hock knock-offs and trinkets to eke out a living.
If they get caught - and can't buy their way out of trouble - it's Kerobokan they'll end up in. That's the jail Antony de Malmanche may find himself in. It's where Schapelle Corby spent years. Capital punishment or not, the sight of the prison should be enough to deter mules. The walls badly need paint. The iron roofing is falling off the guard turrets. If it's that bad on the outside, it must be hell on the inside. We tell the guide we wouldn't stick prisoners in anything that bad.
Then he wants to know more about this crazy judicial system in New Zealand, with no death penalty.
He asks, "If you don't shoot, how do you punish someone who kills another person?"
To that I answer that they go to jail. "For how long? Forever?"
No, not forever. For life. But, I explain, "life" isn't a whole life. It means the murderer could sometimes be out in 10 years. And then I see his absolute surprise and all my smugness evaporates.
