By Zach Hope and Karuni Rompies
Jakarta: Indonesia has given the Australian government a draft proposal for how the remaining Bali Nine prisoners could be transferred home in the most tangible sign yet that it intends to call time on near-20 years the men have spent in Bali and Java jails.
Standing beside Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke in Jakarta on Tuesday, Indonesian minister Yusril Ihza Mahendra said his government was not after anything in return for the proposed transfer and it was a gesture of goodwill from new president Prabowo Subianto.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, left, shakes hands with Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Legal, Human Rights, Immigration and Correctional Affairs, Yusril Ihza Mahendra.Credit: AP
Yusril, the coordinating minister for law, human rights and corrections, said he hoped an agreement could be reached this month, but the fact that neither country had the legal machinery to facilitate a prisoner transfer was complicating the outcome.
“Of course, it depends on the negotiations, and I understand there are some legal matters in respect of the Australian government, and the Indonesian government too,” Yusril said. “This is purely good intentions, and discretion, taken by President Prabowo Subianto.”
Burke said he had just seen the document from the Indonesians and would not comment on what issues the two countries still needed to work through.
“The fact that was handed to us is a significant step forward and shows significant goodwill,” Burke said. “We now need to work through the issues within each country and we’ll be doing that without delay.”
Australians Scott Rush, Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen are still serving life sentences after they were caught trying to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin out of Indonesia in 2005. They have spent their youths in Indonesian jails.
Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed in 2015 for their role in the scheme, while Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen died from cancer in 2018. Renae Lawrence, the only female of the nine, was released in 2018.
If an agreement is reached, the five men would not be released or pardoned by Indonesia, but rather transferred to Australia as prisoners. What happened after that, or what conditions the Indonesians would insist upon, remained unclear.
Yusril has previously said that it would be up to the Australian government to decide their fate once they were on home shores. “If Australia wants to give remission or pardon, it is entirely up to the Australian government,” he said last week.
Seven of nine Australian drug smuggling suspects, from left to right, Scott Rush, Myuran Sukumaran, Tanduc Tan Nguyen, Matthew Norman, Andrew Chan, Si Yi Chan and Renae Lawrence sit at the prosecutors office in Denpasar, in August 2005.Credit: AP
Efforts to get the Australians home after so long in a foreign jail had not meaningfully progressed until Prabowo assumed the presidency from Joko Widodo in October.
The former military general has been forthright in his intention to be friends with all nations, meeting with the leaders of both China and United States in the first weeks of his presidency. Indonesia has also held separate military drills with Russia and Australia in the same time span.
The intention to transfer the Australians is no small deal for an Indonesian president because many voters there have little sympathy for drug criminals and do not want their country to be seen as kowtowing to other nations.
But Prabowo has set about bedding down strong ties with Australia, whom he is fond of after undergoing a military exchange program there in the 1970s. He also likes to cite the role of Australian wharfies’ in Indonesia’s fight for independence against the Dutch.
Indonesia is also working with the Philippines and France over transferring high-profile prisoners back to their home countries under the same yet-to-be-determined legal mechanism. The Philippines’ justice secretary was scheduled to visit Jakarta next week, Yusril said.
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