Bali execution a nightmare of unspeakable violence

ANDREW Chan’s greatest fear is the unspeakable violence of his impending execution, says chaplain Jeff Hammond.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Kerobokan jail in Bali. Picture: Lukman S. Bintoro

ANDREW Chan’s greatest fear is the unspeakable violence of his impending execution, says prison counsellor and chaplain Jeff Hammond.

Chan, 31, has told Dr Hammond he fears the pain of bullets ripping into his heart.

But even more he fears that the firing squad’s aim might go slightly astray.

“He wonders if the captain of the execution squad will have to approach him (and) put a pistol to the side of his head,” Dr Hammond says.

GALLERY: The Bali Two

“He wonders, will he still be conscious before that happens. He wonders how much terror will fill his heart at that moment.”

Those are the fears and nightmares haunting both Chan, with whom Dr Hammond has been in almost daily contact over the past two months, and 33-year-old Myuran Sukumaran.

The Jakarta-based Australian pastor has been confidant and counsellor to Chan for four years.

Throughout the shattering ­refusal of presidential clemency and earlier appeal rejections, he says: “Andrew has been incredible. While knowing his own death is imminent, he has spent most of his time helping other prisoners to overcome their problems and fears.”

An atmosphere of horror-struck anticipation pervades Kerobokan prison as two of its best-known and, in recent years, respected and liked inmates wait to be hustled away to execution.

Dr Hammond says he has not discussed these matters directly with Sukumaran but that mutual friends have told him of the condemned man’s utter despair and private tears as he strives to maintain a strong public face.

“His emotional state is fragile. He puts up a good front in public,’’ Dr Hammond says.

Chan and Sukumaran waited again yesterday to be told when Indonesian penal authorities would move them from Bali’s main penitentiary to the ­Nusakambangan jail complex where the sentences will be executed.

But a meeting planned for yesterday between the Bali prosecutors, police and Kerobokan administrators to co-ordinate their transfer did not happen and so no certainty even about that could be conveyed to the condemned Australians and their families. All Chan and Sukumaran are likely to know until at least today is that four days after they are landed on the Central Java prison island they must die.

All the urgent pleading from Australians and their government having failed, says Melbourne multimedia artist Matthew Sleeth, it is time to stop being polite about what comes next, “the height of barbarity, brutality and cowardice”.

“Let’s not be so dainty and polite,” said Mr Sleeth, who has been giving master classes at Kero­bokan for three years and recently visited Sukumaran with his friend, artist Ben Quilty.

“I can’t believe they are going to take them to a dark beach in the middle of the night, tie them to a pole and shoot them through the chest in cold blood.

“I am sure Indonesians don’t want this done in their name. I am sure this is not the country Indonesia wants to be.

“It’s obscene. It’s been coming and coming. I’ve watched how unbearable it is for the families.”

Chan and Sukumaran family members who are in the second week of their nightmarish Bali vigil, spent much of yesterday inside Kerobokan with the men.

Raji Sukumaran, before entering the visitors’ gate with husband Sam, their other son Chinthu and daughter Brintha, voiced their distress: “I don’t understand why the Indonesian government wants to murder my son.

“They are helping the Indonesian citizens overseas who are on death  row and what is the difference between my son and these people overseas?

“I don’t want my son murdered. Please help.”

Tensions were rising yesterday also between the two governments as an Indonesian Foreign Ministry official questioned whether Foreign Minister Julie Bishop was encouraging Australian tourists to boycott Bali, which they now visit at rate of about one million annually.

Ms Bishop yesterday described “a very tense situation” as she warned that Indonesia should not underestimate the Australian public’s response to the impending executions.

“I think the Australian people will demonstrate their deep disapproval of this action, including by making decisions about where they wish to holiday,” she told Fairfax radio 3AW. “We’re asking for mercy for two Australian citizens who have been rehabilitated. Executing these two young men will not solve the drug scourge in Indonesia.”

Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir responded that he had not read the Australian minister’s statement: “But I doubt that a foreign minister from a friendly country calls out for its citizen not to come here.

“If she calls for her citizens with narcotics not to come here, now I would believe that. Maybe that is what she calls for.

“I doubt that a foreign minister who is well respected in the region would call for citizens not to come here, I very much doubt that.”

Explaining the procedures that will put Chan and Sukumaran in front of a firing squad, most ­likely by the end of next week, the penitentiary official in charge of arrangements was also in a sombre mood yesterday. “The concept of a penitentiary is not making people die,” Ahmad Yuspahruddin, chief of the Justice Ministry’s Central Java penitentiary division told The Weekend Australian.

“The concept of penitentiary is returning people to society, not sending people to the grave.”

Mr Yuspahruddin said that ­according to recent practice, the Australians would be moved from Kerobokan to Nusakambangan four days before the date of ­execution.

After arrival at the complex and being taken into solitary confinement, the men would be ­officially notified of the execution time 72 hours beforehand.

Family members would then be given an ­opportunity to visit during that time.

Additional reporting: Peter Alford, Telly Nathalia, Rosie Lewis