COMMENT I went to bed on Tuesday night with a heavy heart. I knew when I awoke in the morning, two young Australian men whose stories I have been tracking in the news will be dead.

 

I woke up at 5am and reached out to my iPad. With bleary eyes I read the dreaded headline: ‘Chan and Sukumaran executed’. My worst fears were confirmed.

 

The heavy heart I went to bed with felt heavier. My breakfast porridge felt tasteless as the morning TV breakfast news replayed scenes of the last days of the executed duo.  

 

Brewing across the Straits of Malacca is a topic that has overtones for Malaysia, a country that still retains the mandatory death sentence for drug trafficking, like Indonesia.

 

In light of the execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran and six others - four Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian - what is the implication for Malaysia?

 

The fact is I dare presume most Malaysians know very little, if anything at all, about the Bali Nine duo and their remarkable transformations.

 

If they read Malaysiakini , they probably know more about 'how to hump your wife on a camel's hump' (even if she is not up to it) from a Muslim leader reportedly giving unsolicited and unhealthy sex lessons and insulting women.

 

The Penal Code ought to include 'inciting to sexual assault on women on a camel's back' if only to protect women from the madness of the sexual deviants, not to mention the cruelty to animals. Happily, for women, there are no camels in Malaysia, only 'humping' weirdos.

  

I hope more Malaysians will join efforts to demolish the death-row wing of prisons everywhere, especially in places where minors and innocent prisoners are executed in the most questionable situations. 

 

Ten years ago Chan and Sukumaran, a Chinese and Indian, both Australian citizens, were falsely and unjustly reported as 'drug kingpins' and 'bullies' who threatened to kill the other seven Australian couriers.

 

They were nothing of the sort reported by the muckraking journalists. 

 

Sukumaran was a simple mailman who wanted to have the high life he saw others enjoying, succumbed to temptation and thought he could make quick money doing a run.

 

The two death-row prisoners spent a decade in giving the world one of the most successful rehabilitation testimonies from one of the world's toughest jails. It is the story worth telling the world.

 

Sadly Indonesia gave the world a tragic story of the heartless waste of two reformed and gentle souls that gave the Bali jail an air of hope and humanity - now lost forever.  

 

It would have been a story that could have put Indonesia on the world map. But Indonesia does not care about world opinion. Domestic politics decide what politicians do and Indonesians resent being told what to do by Australia, which has seen its foreign minister Julie Bishop do her earnest best.

 

Indonesia chose the dark path when those on death row had found the light.

 

Different fate for Sirul

 

Chan found God and became a Christian pastor who helped many jailmates. Sukumaran was taught painting by Australian Archibald prizewinner Ben Quilty and he, together with Chan, were towers of encouragement to many for whom prison in Bali was a slow death. They were not only rehabilitated but rehabilitated others.

 

Ironically Sirul Azhar Umar ( left ), a Malaysian murderer, is more fortunate in an Australian jail. The former private bodyguard of incumbent Malaysian PM Najib Abdul Razak, the convicted killer of Altantuya Shaariibuu, knows as long as he is on Australian soil he will be safe.

 

Australia does not execute its criminals regardless of the heinousness of the crime. Are Australians soft? On the contrary. No one is soft who is civilised and understands mercy and gives it to those in need.

 

But will we see the same rehabilitation of Sirul while he enjoys the creature comforts of an Australian detention centre that would seem like a three-star hotel to Anwar Ibrahim in his jail cell in Sungai Buloh, or worse in some other Malaysian jail?

 

Will Sirul be contrite and repentant and tell the world the truth? Will he expose the culture of blindly following orders in the police force that could see others get into trouble?

 

Chan and Sukumaran sought mercy and received theirs but not from humans who acted inhumanely. They have gone to a place of perfect justice and endless mercy out of the reach of unjust laws and human corruption and false notions of justice.

 

Chan knew he could not deceive God. And like all repentant sinners, he reconciled himself with God. He did not blame others. He was not bitter. He found faith in Jesus Christ, the first and last resort of hope and forgiveness for hopeless sinners. They were not even serious criminals, they did not harm anyone.

 

But they broke Indonesia's laws against drugs and they deserved to be punished but not die. They have tried to make amends. They accepted their jailing and loss of freedom. They could not undo the past. What more could they do?

 

Everyone makes mistakes. They had and wanted to spend the rest of their lives repaying Indonesia for their mistakes committed when they were young and gullible. They could have been very useful in the prison's rehabilitation work and advocates against drugs not only in Indonesia but their home country Australia, facing serious drug problems.

 

But Australia, despite the inherent and serious drugs problems, has not picked on anyone to be the scapegoats, the sacrificial lambs in a vain political ritual to appease the crowds. 

           

Legalised murder

 

In fact, a young Japanese girl travelling through Malaysia was tricked by a Malaysian who befriended her to carry drugs into Australia without her knowledge (her suitcase was stolen and she was given a replacement by the conspirator) and caught at the airport.

 

She spent 10 years in jail for a crime she did not commit, but had she been caught in Malaysia she would be dead.

 

Like many others, the more I learned about them the more I liked them and the less I thought they deserved to die. Indeed, no one on drugs charges deserves to die.

 

It is ironic that Islamic State fighters are high on drugs when they are sent into battle and drugs like alcohol that has harmed societies more is legal. Mugs do drugs and education and enforcement are more effective than the death penalty, but how does anyone justify death for drugs?  

 

The media initially did them injustice in painting them as hardened 'drug kingpins' when they were young and gullible men in their early 20s who thought they could, in Chan's words, get a 'quick paycheck'. 

 

To those who are hell-bent on revenge, even many Christians in the United States with the misguided idea of a 'life for a life' and failure to appreciate they no longer live by the old rule of the archaic written Jewish code, the death penalty is justified. Tragic.

 

To me and a growing global number of people, the death penalty is legalised murder and as Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott rightly said, "cruel and unnecessary" in Chan's and Sukumaran's execution by firing squad.

 

Is it any wonder that the executioners are given hours of counselling after the execution and guards dampen their minds to the merciless deeds and they do whisper to the dying that they are 'only doing my job', as if in exoneration of something they know is fundamentally wrong. 

 

Isn't that what Sirul told us? He killed Altantuya because he was only 'doing his job' and 'following orders' as he was trained to do. And his co-accused, Azilah Hadri ( right ), had boasted of several other killings.

 

We condemn whoever gave the orders to kill poor Altantuya, and are perplexed by the police's lack of interest in seeking out the truth for Dr Mahathir Mohamad, and for so many Malaysians who have asked the same crucial question: Who ordered the killing of Altantuya?

 

Until the real murderer who masterminded or ordered the killing of Altantuya is convicted, it remains a cold case that the police should not deem a closed case. That merely arouses the public perception of a cover-up.

 

Sukumaran’s last painting

However, do we think those who ordered the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran as being less guilty in light of their subsequent confession, cooperation and most importantly rehabilitation and constructive help to the rehabilitation of other prisoners?

 

Regrettably, Indonesian President Joko Widodo has given in to the pressures of domestic politics and the local mindset that damns drugs traffickers, even 'tricked mules' couriers, as more deserving of the death penalty than murderers.

 

Did it matter to Widodo that the drugs were headed for Australia from Bali? Did it matter that possible corruption was involved in the death penalty judgment? Did it matter that another drugs-charge-convicted Australian Schapelle Corby was given mercy?

 

Had Widodo not locked in and dampened his conscience to mercy and been courageous and strong in considering the unique cases of Chan and Sukumaran separately instead of lumping them together with those who had carried 10 times more drugs, the outcome would have been positively different.

 

Ironically the last painting by Sukumaran of a blood-soaked heart with blood streaking down was not symbolic of his own but that of one missing in the one who could have saved him? Would a bleeding heart have saved the executed?

 

Now more than 200 Indonesians facing the death penalty abroad will be worrying over their fate and how Indonesia can argue for them when they have so mercilessly executed Chan and Sukumaran, and the poor Nigerians whose bodies can't even be taken back to their homeland. 

 

According to Amnesty International in 1977, 16 countries had abolished the death penalty and today 140 nations - two-thirds of the world - no longer have the death penalty.

 

Malaysia must start its own journey toward the repeal of the death penalty and particularly the mandatory death penalty for drugs. There has to be intelligent debate not knee-jerk primeval emotional responses to drugs based on the damaged lives of recreational drug-users.

 

Surely to save lives must be better than to snuff them out mercilessly and the deaths of Chan and Sukumaran have not been in vain if the world comes to its senses and accepts that rehabilitation is still the best solution, not cruel bullets into the hearts of its innocent victims.

 

Does Indonesia still have a heart?

 

 

STEVE OH is the author of the novel ‘Tiger King of the Golden Jungle’ and composer of the musical of the same title. He believes in good governance and morally upright leaders.