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May 29, 2005

Schapelle show

I sure don't envy the situation in which Australian Prime Minister John Howard finds himself with the case of Schapelle Corby, the photogenic 27-year-old Aussie convicted of trying to smuggle marijuana into Indonesia. Try to imagine, if this was a Canadian woman, what sort of reaction Paul Martin would receive to this:

She was subject to the justice system of another country and whenever [Canadians] travel overseas it must be understood that they are subject to the justice systems of the countries they visit and we have neither the power nor the right to intervene at a government level in the way in which those justice systems operate. I am sure that if a foreigner were on trial in this country and the prime minister or president of that person’s country sought to intervene in our court system we would rightfully resent it.

The Blogging Reactionaries would tear off his head and defecate in the resulting hole, invoking the names of William Sampson, Zara Kazemi and Nguyen Thi Hiep. They would demand that aid money be withdrawn and that relations be severed, and when that didn't happen they would dismiss the government as lily-livered and useless. In other words, everything would happen that's happening in Australia right now, except that Howard is usually regarded as strong and the Australian foreign service as competent and forceful in defence of its citizens.

That's a lot of words to say I have nothing to say, but I do think this is an excellent manifestation of what happens when opinion is prized in and of itself. Case in point: Australia's Daily Telegraph, which chose to take the "respect the Indonesian courts" path while bizarrely criticizing the sentence:

[Foreign Minister] Mr Downer and Prime Minister John Howard are correct — we have to respect the verdict on Corby, as we would expect Indonesia to respect our judicial system.

But we believe that this sentence is an abomination. And that if our closest neighbour can dole out 2½ years to a man who helped murder 88 of our countrymen [Corby's fellow inmate Abu Bakar Bashir], it cannot explain in logic why Corby received 10 times that sentence for a crime in no way comparable to that vile terrorist act.

What the hell? Respect Indonesian justice, but not the harshness of their sentencing laws for drug offences? That's silly. What they really mean is this: "we have nothing to say about Schapelle Corby but as a newspaper we are obligated to do so, so here goes nothing."

All I can say is, if I were involved I wouldn't be so quick to trust Indonesian justice, certainly not to the extent the Telegraph is asking Australians to. The best justice systems in the world convict and incarcerate innocent people, and Indonesia's is not one of the world's best justice systems. For Corby's sake, I sure hope she's guilty. Er... yeah.

Posted by Chris Selley at May 29, 2005 06:57 PM