Time to come home for the Bali Nine, left doing hard time in Indonesia

The mooted homecoming of members of the Bali Nine drug syndicate still serving time in Indonesian jails would be a major coup for the Albanese government, which has already secured the release of economist Sean Turnell from jail in Myanmar, journalist Cheng Lei from China and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from Britain.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had negotiated the prospective deal for them to return to Australia to serve out their sentences with the new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto on the sidelines of the APEC meeting in Peru this month. They may be home by Christmas.

Australians Matthew Norman (right), Si Yi Chen (centre) and Tach Duc Thanh Nguyen in court during their trial in Denpasar, Bali in October 2005.Credit: AP

Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen are serving life sentences in prisons on Bali and Java after being arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia.

They were among the so-called Bali Nine, a group of Australians convicted for attempting to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin, valued at about $4 million. The ringleaders, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, were sentenced to death and executed on April 29, 2015. Another member, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died from cancer in June 2018, while Renae Lawrence was released in November 2018 after her sentence was commuted.

From the distance of nearly 20 years, it is difficult to recall the mixed emotions and responses to their arrest and sentencing. The East Timor crisis of 1999 had strained Australia’s relationship with Indonesia, but the war on terrorism and the 2002 Bali bombings had brought our countries closer.

Then came the Bali arrests. The Australians’ fate quickly became an international political issue while the mix of politics, drugs, terrorism and capital punishment polarised domestic discourse.

The relationship between the two nations lurched as images of the nine young Australians in a Denpasar jail, along with boogie-board bag cannabis smuggler Schapelle Corby, were shown by media back home. They all faced possible lengthy prison sentences or even death in Bali, and when Chan and Sukumaran were executed, then-prime minister Tony Abbott withdrew Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia.

The situation had been made even more fraught after Australians learned the Australian Federal Police had tipped off their Bali counterparts, knowing the offence in Indonesia carried the death penalty.

Debate swirled. Would it not have been more humane to have withheld knowledge until the drug couriers and their associates returned to Sydney, where police could have made arrests without the risk of these Australians facing a firing squad? Such questions were legitimately pondered but were not easily answered when law enforcement against transnational crime, such as terrorism and drug smuggling, demanded co-operation between countries.

The opposition of Australian legislatures to capital punishment is manifest. But ultimately, we could only plead for clemency on behalf of citizens so desperate, stupid and greedy as to tempt such a fate in a less tolerant country.

Years ago, the executions and sentences prompted division. A mean-spirited backlash by politicians in both nations has greeted confirmation of the men’s release. But it is time they came home.

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