John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was horrified this morning to read page 1 of the Sydney Morning Herald and the report titled ‘Death for four more Bali mules’. Inter alia, the report from Mark Forbes reads:

Four more of the Bali nine drug mules have been sentenced to death after Indonesia’s Supreme Court issued shock verdicts on their appeals for lighter jail sentences—meaning at least six of the Australian heroin smugglers now face execution.

…                …              …

The only hope for the convicted is an extraordinary appeal for a judicial review, which must be based on new evidence or significant error in law, or a pardon from the Indonesian President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Dr Yudhoyono has never pardoned a convicted drug trafficker and his office has indicated he will not.

This is chilling news for all of us. In relation to Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Si Yi Chen and Tan Nguyen, I draw to the attention of the parliament what I said in this place on 23 May this year about Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, who are also on death row. I repeat the plight which now lies before these young Australians:

In Indonesia the death sentence is carried out by a firing squad of 10 to 12 men, all of whom simultaneously fire a shot at the victim’s heart. Only two members of the firing squad fire bullets, while the others discharge blank cartridges. It is not known to the marksmen which of them fired the bullets. This ensures that none of them has to live with the horror that they are responsible for such an inhumane act. This reveals the ultimate inhumanity of the act of capital punishment—that the person responsible for the extinguishing of a life be removed from the death that he or she has caused and all the normal emotions that would accompany such an act. Thus the wrongness of the act of capital punishment is revealed dramatically by its process. Execution by a firing squad is one of the most barbaric forms of killing. Rarely does the victim die quickly. It normally takes the victim three to five minutes to die, sometimes longer. Sometimes the victim does not lose consciousness during this time. Accuracy of the firing squad cannot be assumed, nor can an assumption be made that the death will be quick or free of enormous pain.

Should these young men be executed by a firing squad, they will be taken to a secluded forest. It will be at night, and there will be little warning. Their families and friends and legal representatives will not be notified and have no right to be present. They will not even have the dignity of an opportunity to say goodbye. Once at the place of execution, they will be blindfolded and, more than likely, restrained to a tree. A mark will then be placed on their heart as a target for members of the firing squad. They will then be shot and their bodies released to their families for their tragic return to Australia.

Capital punishment is fundamentally contrary to all that is human. I call on all members of this House to speak out and condemn capital punishment and do everything to spare the lives of these young Australians.