NUSA KEMBANGAN: THE DAY AFTER

A wave of fury will soon sweep across Australia with the execution of Bali Nine ringleaders, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, by an Indonesian firing squad. Threats of boycotting Bali, cutting aid, expelling Indonesian diplomats and recalling our own officials, will flood the airwaves.

And then what?

Will that same outrage be directed at the 50+ countries around the globe who still have capital punishment on their books, including for such ‘grievous’ misdemeanours as adultery and blasphemy?

Will our senior religious figures urge Saudi Arabia to stop the Friday lopping of heads, including of minors? Will our politicians unite to tell the Japanese, the Americans, the Malaysians and a host of others that the problem is not who is killed and how they are killed but that they are killed at all?

Sadly, indeed scandalously, the answer will be no. Normal service will resume—resume that is until the next Australian is shot, hanged, beheaded, injected etc. Then we’ll rage again at the injustice of it all.

We obsess about the person when our real target should be the principle: there’s no place for capital punishment in a civilised world. Nationality has nothing to do with it. So if any good can possibly come from the deaths of Sukumaran and Chan it will be that people like Julie Bishop and Tanya Plibersek and Ben Quilty drive a campaign for the abolition of capital punishment. Fullstop.

13 February 2015