Please, show them some mercy: All PMs unite against death penalty

THEY rarely all agree on any subject, but today Australia’s six former prime ministers are united on a matter of life and death.

Australian death-row prisoners Myuran Sukumaran, right, and Andrew Chan at Kerobokan prison in Bali.

IN a rare and commanding show of political unity, Australia’s six former prime ministers have backed diplomatic efforts to save Andrew Chan and Myuran Suku­maran from their looming executions in Indonesia.

On the day Australia’s Jakarta embassy officials met with Indonesia’s foreign ministry to discuss details of the imminent court-­ordered killings, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, John Howard, Paul Keating, Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser made public their deeply held beliefs about seeking mercy for Australians Chan and Sukumaran. With time running out, the unprecedented statements from every living former prime minister were provided to The Aus­tralian within hours of each other yesterday.

Pleading for compassion, Ms Gillard said: “I personally would find it heartbreaking if such extraordinary efforts to become of good character were not met with an act of mercy, of recognition of change.”

Mr Howard said: “They committed a very serious crime but have demonstrated genuine rehabilitation. Mercy being shown in such circumstances would not weaken the deterrent effect of Indonesia’s strong anti-drug laws.”

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Common to the former nat­ional leaders is a deep regard for local sensitivities in Indonesia.

Mr Fraser said: “We face an extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible, task if we seek to impose our value system on other countries. Suggestions that our ambassador should be withdrawn if, according to Indonesian law, the executions tragically take place, are extremely foolish.”

Mr Rudd, who sought clemency for trafficker Van Tuong Nguyen before he was executed by Singapore in 2005, said his position on the death penalty was unchanged: “As a deep, long-standing friend of Indonesia over the decades, I would add my voice to my prime ministerial peers, and respectfully request an act of clemency.”

Mr Hawke emphasised Chan’s and Suku­maran’s self-­rehabil­itation during nine years under death sentence. “These two men made a mistake when they were young and foolish. They have served their incarceration with model behaviour, and I therefore urge and plead that the government reconsider its decision to now take their lives.”

Mr Keating described the death penalty as “a monstrous act which provides no atonement for a crime … and for that reason, the Indonesian government should heed the appeals for clemency in respect of the two Australians in its charge.”

Without in any way condoning drug trafficking, Mr Keating said, “In this case, the penalty is out of all proportion to the crime”.

While public and political pressure mounts in Australia to prevent Sukumaran and Chan facing a firing squad, Indonesian officials said settling a date for the executions could be delayed until the end of the week. Preparations to move Chan and Sukumaran from Bali are almost complete but not for three others marked for ­execution on the same night from jails in Java and Sumatra to the Nusakambangan prison complex.

“After all are moved there, the date of implementation will be ­determined,” the Attorney-­General’s spokesman, Tony Spontana, told The Australian ­yesterday. “Hopefully all will be moved this week.”

Bali chief prosecutor Momock Bambang Samiarso said the Australian pair would be moved this week but not before tomorrow from Kerobokan to the Batu high security unit on Nusakambangan, where they will wait in solitary confinement for their deaths.

The Attorney-General’s office has yet to decide whether two other foreign prisoners more recently refused clemency by President Joko Widodo would be added to the pending “batch” of eight drug convicts for execution.

The uncertainty has already exhausted Chan’s aged parents, Helen and the seriously ill Ken, who said their farewells and returned to Sydney yesterday.

Watching the macabre logistics of mass execution, Indonesian-style, is likely to further harden public and political hostility in Australia to the death ­sentences. Extraordinary efforts are being made to impress on the Indonesian government the case for mercy, given the work of Chan and Sukumaran to rehabilitate themselves in prison, and their attempts to rehabilitate other prisoners, many of them Indonesian.

The involvement of former prime ministers, many with close, past and present relationships with Indonesia, may add heft to the efforts of Tony Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to have Mr Joko spare the heroin smugglers. “Like millions of Australians, I feel sick in the pit of my stomach when I think about what is quite possibly happening to these youngsters,” the Prime Minister said yesterday. He made another personal representation to Mr Joko to halt the executions but the President remains unmoved.

Mr Abbott is wary of forcing the situation. “Because if we do turn this into a test of strength, I think we are much more likely to back the Indonesians into a corner than to get the result we want.”

A Lowy Institute survey commissioned from Newspoll shows 62 per cent object to the killing of Chan and Sukumaran and 69 per cent oppose putting anybody to death for drug trafficking.

The Lowy-Newspoll survey, taken on Friday and Saturday, found 31 per cent approved of the executions.

Additional reporting Deborah Cassrels, Telly Nathalia