Beheaded in the wrong direction

THOSE wacky councillors from Sydney's inner-urban Marrickville are at it again: trampling on the right of convicted Islamic terrorists to be executed and martyred.

How dare they! Even the most ardent civil rightists don't go meddling in traditional cultural matters and yet a majority of the left-leaning council has voted to plead with Indonesia to spare the lives of three Bali bombers just weeks before their eagerly anticipated demise. What an affront to these deeply religious chaps who have only asked that they be permitted to be beheaded in the traditional Islamic manner rather than sent to paradise and their waiting virgins via firing squad. Even the Catholic Church's meddling Social Justice Commission leapt into the fray in an attempt to deny the Islamists' wish to die for their murderous cause. Spoil sports! The Bali bombers, Amrozi, Imam Samudra and Ali Gufron, who celebrated their good fortune shortly before Christmas with a cell visit from grinning spiritual adviser Abu Bakar Bashir, have even sent letters of encouragement to potential martyrs around the Islamo-sphere, imploring others to attack the West with their own suicide bombs. The 2002 Bali bombing killed 202 people, including 88 Australians, but Marrickville's Greens councillor Colin Hesse, who proposed that the council write to the Indonesian Government seeking clemency for the terrorists, says he is in accord with every major Australian political party in asking that their lives be spared. The motion passed by four votes to three, with five Labor councillors abstaining, which suggests that those Labor figures, at least, are of like mind with federal leader Kevin Rudd, who set himself at odds with Labor's Attorney-General Robert McClelland after he'd opposed the death penalty, even for terrorists. Rudd's hair-splitting view, weakly approximated by the Labor members of the Marrickville council, was that Labor opposed the death penalty universally but would not intervene in the Bali case. Abstention is the opposition you put forward when you don't really want to identify with a cause which might be unpopular with the punters. But what's wrong with letting the Bali bombers have their way and let them die as they wish at the hand of a sword-wielding executioner? Imagine the YouTube traffic the video would attract! Because, as surely as someone took a camera-phone into Saddam Hussein's execution chamber, there would be someone with an instant upload of the sword flashing as it descended in the Bali dawn. It's a fair bet that those Marrickville councillors who want to ruin these murderers chances of getting down and dirty with the promised doe-eyed virgins didn't consult on this matter with the members of the council of their sister-city Bethlehem, where dubious Islamists linked to the terrorist organisation Hamas hold positions of influence. For Pete's sake, the Bali bombers have even told their own lawyers not to interfere in the planned executions and above all, not to file motions for clemency, because they say they welcome death. How Western of Marrickville Council and the Catholic Church's Justice Commission to attempt to impose their own cultural values on these God-fearing terrorists, how imperialistic, how hegemonistic! Let the Bali bombers be beheaded. Surely they can be granted one dying wish. After all, few Australians would hope they be granted the wish Bashir boasted when he visited their cells - that there would be a "big disaster" if they died for their crimes - nor would most want Samudra's wish - that "Australia will go down, its world will go down, the people will go down, and doom on their Armageddon". All this was predicated on the expectation Australian "kaffirs" (non-Muslims) would not convert to Islam in the near future, as Samudra demanded. What is apparent in this instance is a clear conflict of rights: the right of Marrickville councillors to grandstand, and the right of those able to make a truly life-or-death decision about their own future. It seems preposterous that those facing the more permanent choice are having to ward off interference from those seeking newspaper headlines. There may be a simpler explanation for this foolishness - that those who are using the Bali terrorists executions to glean a little publicity may simply want a free trip to Bali to soak up some sun and get in a protest while they're at it. Interfering in the traditions and customs of sovereign people is serious business however and perhaps the whole notion should be kicked upstairs to someone who has the gravitas to deal with the issue. Perhaps cultural czar Peter Garrett might consider it. With the global warming problem resolved, he should have time to look at the rights of convicted terrorists to enjoy culturally sensitive, traditionally appropriate punishment.