Shot through the heart?

 There is currently a video circulating the internet, featuring Australian 'celebrities' pleading for mercy for con...victed drug traffickers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan who are imminently facing the death penalty in Indonesia. There will also be a vigil in Sydney this evening, hosted by musicians and Human Rights advocates.

These men have been on death row since 2006. They were found to be the ringleaders of nine now infamous Australians attempting to smuggle $4 million of heroin into Australia from Bali. Since 2006, countless attempts have been made, through both lawyers and the Australian Government, to save and potentially free these men (among many others).

I don't begin to claim that I can understand what their families are going through, nor do I know firsthand how 'rehabilitated' they are - as they are claiming. If they hadn't been caught, how many people's lives would have been taken, or at the very least, destroyed by that heroin? They are two people. Two people who knew - as we all do on arrival in Indonesia - that the consequences of drug smuggling in that and many other countries, is potential death. Not by a nice little sleepy-bye-bye needle, but a firing squad or in some other South East Asian countries a noose. How many people and their families would have been affected had that heroin made it onto our streets? Yes, I know it's a drop in the ocean. That there is plenty more heroin making it's way to Australians, but these guys weren't jay-walking, or caught breaking some obscure law that nobody knew about.

For as long as I can remember, our media have flooded us with stories of Westerners facing death in international prisons, generally for drug smuggling or dealing. Even back in 1986, we were made more than aware of Barlow and Chambers being hanged in Malaysia. Yet again, our government is being called upon to interfere. To save these 'rehabilitated men'. Could our resources not be put to better use? If we are going to try to save Australians in international prisons, start with the journalists who are locked up in appalling conditions for 'providing false news'.

Are we prepared to open up our justice system (failing as it seems to be at times) and our country to other governments to have an opinion if we lock up their citizens and subject them to our punishments? Should someone stone a woman to death on our territory for having sex outside of marriage when she has been raped, will we set that person free because our law doesn't correspond with theirs and their government or Embassy asked really nicely?

Personally, I've grown tired of Australians (and others, for that matter) who continue to travel to other countries, blatantly abuse their culture, their people and their laws, then cry to all and sundry who will listen when they need bailing out.