By Zach Hope, Karuni Rompies and Amilia Rosa
Bali: A key member of Indonesia’s parliamentary justice committee has strongly criticised the decision to allow the remaining members of the Bali Nine to return to Australia, saying the deal goes against his own nation’s laws.
Andreas Hugo Pareira, the deputy head of the committee, said the deals struck with Australia and the Philippines to allow prisoners to return has set bad precedents and could be used in the future on the whim of whoever happened to be in power.
The five men were whisked from Bali to Darwin on Sunday in an operation so top secret that even Michael Czugaj and Martin Stephens, who were being held in Java, initially thought they were only being transferred to another prison, according to Indonesian government spokesman Ahmad Usmarwi Kaffah.
Martin Stephens, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Matthew Norman and Si Yi Chen look on as Australia and Indonesia sign an agreement for their return home.Credit:
While the deal had been brewing for weeks, the speed at which it finally happened caught many in both countries by surprise.
“This transfer of prisoners does not have legal basis at all,” said Pareira, who is the deputy leader of Commission XIII, the body overseeing policy areas of law, human rights, corrections, immigration, terrorism and Pancasila – the Indonesian national philosophy.
“It’s only based on a practical arrangement. What is this practical arrangement? Where does this practical arrangement sit in our legal system?
“The government needs to explain to the public why … this transfer of prisoners ignores the Corrections law.”
High-profile Filipino death-row inmate Mary Jane Veloso is this week set to be transferred home after her government struck a similar deal with Indonesia.
She was caught at Indonesia’s Yogyakarta airport with 2.6 kilograms of heroin sewn into her luggage while on a holiday she said was paid for by the person who had promised her a job in Malaysia.
Filipino death-row drug convict Mary Jane Veloso poses for a photo with a Mother Mary statue during a Christmas event at the Yogyakarta women’s prison in Gunung Kidul, Indonesia.Credit: AP
Veloso and Filipino investigators say the drugs were hidden in the suitcase without her knowledge.
France is also looking to secure a transfer deal for one of its citizens.
The outspoken Pareira is a member of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, the current opposition to new president Prabowo Subianto and the huge coalition he stitched together before his October inauguration.
Kaffah, a spokesman for the Law, Human Rights, Immigration and Corrections ministry, told journalists in Jakarta on Monday that Indonesian legislation provided for presidential discretion.
He added that the secrecy surrounding Sunday’s transfer was the request of the Australian government because “they did not want it to be noisy out there”.
Asked if Australia now had an obligation to consider future repatriation requests from the Indonesian government, Kaffah responded: “Yes, it is called the reciprocal principle.”
The spokesman also emphasised that the men, who are now free but not pardoned by Indonesia, had to continue their rehabilitation in Australia.
The transfer of the five remaining Bali Nine members is a sensitive issue because of Muslim-majority Indonesia’s revulsion to drug crime. Even so, the news in Indonesia has been quickly overtaken by other political stories.
Criticism of the powerful new president has also been muted, in contrast to when former president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) reduced the sentence of Australian Schapelle Corby. A headline at the time on major news site Kompas declared that her “release embarrasses Indonesia”.
Indonesia’s National Movement Against Narcotics even tried to challenge the president’s decision in court. It has not released a statement this time around.
In 2015, SBY’s successor Joko Widodo famously refused to spare the lives of so-called ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran despite hard lobbying from the Australian government, which Widodo’s closest aide criticised as “unacceptable … warnings and the thinly veiled threats”.
The pair’s Indonesian lawyer, Professor Todung Mulya Lubis, told this masthead he was pleased to see the remaining men finally sent home.
“I understand there is a suggestion to make a law to facilitate the transfer of prisoners, but that will take time. For this one, I think we can accept it on the basis of humanity,” he said.
“I remember when I was still handling Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran that this issue was being discussed, whether transfer of prisoners could be approved or considered. But there were no commonalities found [between Australian and Indonesian governments].
“It is only now that it can be carried out. I welcome the good steps made by the current Indonesian government.”
Prabowo’s approach has been at odds with his predecessors. On Friday he promised to pardon close to 44,000 prisoners to help relieve pressure on Indonesia’s crowded jails. The figure is about 30 per cent of the total prison population.
Those to be pardoned include Papuan independence activists and people convicted of non-trafficking drug crimes.
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.