Death for Chan and Sukumaran while home-town kingpin gets reprieve
Date February 13, 2015 - 6:37PM
Michael Bachelard
Death: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.
It's a tale of two drug rings in Indonesia. The first manufactured kilograms of the drug ice, known locally as sabu sabu, at a factory in Surabaya and pumped it out throughout the country, hooking Indonesia's youth. The second was the Bali Nine plot to transit 8.3 kilograms of heroin from Thailand to the streets of Australia with a brief stopover in Bali.
Both drug rings were busted by Indonesian police and the perpetrators brought to the courts. The key figures in both were handed the death penalty. But that is where the similarity ends.
Unaware of the specifics: Indonesian President Joko Widodo wearing a Napalm Death T-shirt. Photo: VICE Media
The ice plot was masterminded by an Indonesian man called Hangky Gunawan. There is no dispute that he owned the drug factory, which was in Surabaya, East Java, as well as a major distribution network. It made him one of the country's most notorious drug traffickers, and he was caught with more than 11kg of the highly addictive and dangerous drug.
When Indonesian president Joko Widodo says, as he has regularly, that drugs are destroying Indonesia's youth, killing 40 to 50 a day, it's this kind of operation that's doing the damage. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime says Indonesia's main drug problem comes from factory-manufactured amphetamines.
But in Hangky's initial trial in 2007, the Surabaya district court handed down an 18-year sentence. Prosecutors appealed, and the Supreme Court changed it to death.
Reprieve: Hangky Gunawan. Photo: jaringnews.com
The case ran almost in parallel with that of Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. At every step of their journey – from the Bali district court, through numerous appeals – the death penalty was reconfirmed.
In May 2011, Chan's final appeal became case No. 37 in the Supreme Court in Jakarta, and Sukumaran case No. 38. They were seeking a judicial review from a full bench. In both cases, the death penalty was reconfirmed. The Indonesian system, they said, gave no quarter to drug convicts.
Then, with the very next case, No. 39, Hangky Gunawan made his bid for reprieve.
Suddenly, the attitude of the court changed. The death penalty, it found, violated Article 28 of the Indonesian constitution, which guarantees everyone the right to life. It went against the country's 1999 law on human rights. The chief judge, Imron Anwari, went so far as to say the purpose of criminal sentencing was to educate, correct and prevent additional wrongdoing. It even quoted Article 3 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Hangky, the home-town boy, had his sentence reduced to 15 years which, under Indonesia's relatively generous good-behaviour provisions, means he could be out in about eight. One of the judges, Achmad Yamanie, then crossed that out and reduced it even further to 12 years. He was later sacked dishonourably for that unauthorised adjustment.
But Hangky Gunawan had his reprieve.
The ruling actually, briefly, led to the hope that the Indonesian Supreme Court had found the voice of conscience when it came to the death penalty. Alas, it had probably just found a way to make an exception, though the panel, including the chief judge, were later cleared of allegations of bribery
Sukumaran and Chan, meanwhile are being moved to what is likely to be their final home; the ultramax island prison complex called Nusakambangan. They are foreigners; they have no money and therefore, in the Indonesian justice system, despite the untiring efforts of their lawyers, they have little voice.
And when the Indonesian president, Joko Widodo, was asked, upon rejecting their final plea for clemency, why he wanted to execute people who had been taking drugs out of the country, he did not even know the specifics of their case.
Such is the system of justice in Indonesia.
with Amilia Rosa
