Bali Nine remaining prisoners must be moved to Australia

The controversial homecoming of members of the Bali Nine drug gang currently serving time in Indonesian prisons would be a major blow for the Albanian government, which has already secured the release of the suspects. Economist Sean Turnell released from prison in Myanmar, Journalist Cheng Lei from China and British Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks..

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had negotiated a possible deal for them to return to Australia to serve their sentences with new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto on the sidelines of an APEC meeting in Peru this month. They could be home by Christmas.

Matthew Norman, Michael Czugaj, Scott Rush, Martin Stephens and Si Yi Chen are serving life sentences in prisons in Bali and Java after being arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle heroin from Indonesia to Australia.

They were among the Bali Nine, a group of Australians convicted of attempting to smuggle more than eight kilograms of items. heroin, Its value is approximately 4 million dollars. Ringleaders Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death and executed on April 29, 2015. Another member, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died of cancer in June 2018. Renae Lawrence was released in November 2018 after his sentence was commuted.

From a distance of nearly 20 years, it is difficult to remember the mixed emotions and reactions to their arrest and sentencing. The East Timor crisis in 1999 had strained Australia’s relations with Indonesia, but the war on terrorism and the 2002 Bali bombings had brought our countries closer.

Then came the Bali arrests. The mix of politics, drugs, terrorism and the death penalty has polarized domestic discourse as the fate of Australians quickly becomes an international political issue.

The relationship between the two countries was rocked when the country’s media showed images of nine young Australians in Denpasar prison and boogie-board bagged cannabis smuggler Schapelle Corby. They all faced possible long prison sentences or even death in Bali, and when Chan and Sukumaran were executed, then prime minister Tony Abbott recalled Australia’s ambassador to Indonesia.

The situation became even more worrying after Australians learned that the Australian Federal Police had tipped off their Balinese counterparts, knowing that crime in Indonesia carried the death penalty.

The debate flared up. Wouldn’t it be more humane to withhold the information until the drug couriers and their associates return to Sydney, where police can make arrests without risking these Australians facing a firing squad? Such questions were legitimately debated but not easily answered when law enforcement demanded cooperation between countries against international crimes such as terrorism and drug trafficking.