Australia yesterday denied that it had agreed to treat young Indonesian people smugglers more leniently in return for Indonesia reducing the prison sentence of a high-profile Australian drug trafficker.
However, Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr conceded that Indonesians saw a link between the treatment of Australian Schapelle Corby and young Indonesians held in Australian prisons.
Corby, 34, learned in a Bali prison on Tuesday that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had granted a five-year reduction of a 20-year sentence for her 2005 conviction for smuggling marijuana onto the island.
Photo: AFP
Her lawyer said that since several other cuts to her sentence were approved previously, she could be freed in about three months.
The successful bid for clemency comes a week after Australia released three young Indonesians from prison based on new evidence that they might not be adults. Crew members of Indonesian people smuggling boats who illegally bring asylum-seekers to Australia are sent home without punishment if they are children.
Indonesian State Secretary Sudi Silalahi said Corby’s sentence reduction was part of a reciprocal deal in which Australia would be more lenient toward young Indonesians arrested for crewing asylum seeker boats.
Indonesian Minister for Justice and Human Rights Amir Syamsuddin also said the sentence reduction should encourage Australia to release more young Indonesians held in prison.
“That’s how the Indonesians see it,” Carr said, but he denied that Australia’s decision was part of any reciprocal agreement.
“We’d be making that decision about those minors if there were no Schapelle Corby and indeed no Australians serving time in Indonesian jails,” Carr said. “We’d be doing it because it’s unconscionable to hold minors in adult prisons.”
“If that’s created a level of goodwill in Indonesia that has helped make this decision possible, then that’s fine,” he added.
He said both Corby and the incarceration of young Indonesians in Australia were on the agenda of a bilateral summit involving foreign and defense ministers in Canberra in March.
He said Australia had undertaken to release Indonesian prisoners if evidence emerged that they were minors.
“In all sincerity, they can see the issues as being linked, but for our own part, we would have been making the decision on minors if there were no Australians in any Indonesian prison,” Carr said.
Corby’s lawyer, Iskandar Nawing, said Indonesian authorities agreed to reduce her sentence because of her poor mental state.
Corby’s case has attracted intense and sustained attention in Australia, where many people believe she is innocent of the crime which she has consistently denied. To be “schapelled” has emerged as Australian slang for suffering a harsh injustice.
Corby maintains she does not know how 4.2kg of marijuana came to be found in her surfboard bag when it was searched on arrival at Denpasar Airport in late 2004.
She has since published an autobiography from prison in 2006 and has twice been hospitalized for depression in 2008 and 2009.
Corby’s mother, Rosleigh Rose, yesterday told reporters outside her home at the Australian east coast city of Logan that she would fly to Bali in July and “will be bringing her home.”
“I think it hasn’t sunk in yet. I can’t believe it,” Rose said in a statement, referring to the reduced sentence.
Indonesian law expert Tim Lindsay, director of Melbourne University’s Asian Law Center, said the clemency decision was good news for other Australian prisoners in Indonesia, including two on death row for heroin trafficking.
“The president ... has on many occasions indicated he would not use his power of clemency in favor of drug offenders,” Lindsay told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “He’s just done so and he’s done so to a very significant degree.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese