Jakarta silent on 11th-hour pleas
Eleventh-hour efforts by Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop to reach out to counterparts in Indonesia in a bid to save Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have yet to garner an official response.
As tensions continue between Canberra and Jakarta over the imminent executions, the foreign minister on Friday said she had written to Indonesian counterpart Retno Marsudi in the wake of a heated telephone conversation on Tuesday, to ask for a “pause” to consider options for saving the two Australians.
The development comes amid anger over photographs of a smiling police chief posing with Chan and Sukumaran on a plane during their transfer to Nusakambangan on Wednesday, the island off central Java where, along with eight others, they are to be shot.
The prime minister’s request for another telephone conversation with Indonesian President Joko Widodo has also so far been unsuccessful.
“Sometimes it takes a little while for that request to be acted on,” Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Friday.
You might like
“But I do want to assure people that in a whole host of different ways, we are continuing to make our position crystal clear.”
Abbott described the photographs as “unbecoming”.
“I thought they showed a lack or respect and lack of dignity,” he said.
The letter sent by Bishop to Retno, delivered on Thursday, sets out in more detail her proposal for a “pause” while officials explore the idea of a prisoner swap, or other options that would spare the lives of the two Australians.
Stay informed, daily
“I didn’t put a specific proposal for the Indonesian to reject,” she said.
“I put a proposal that we begin talks about what could be achieved.”
Widodo has rejected the idea of a prisoner swap arrangement for Chan and Sukumaran, sentenced in 2006 for their parts in a plot to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin from Bali to Australia.
“No way,” he said on Thursday.
Bishop said an official complaint had been lodged over the “undignified and degrading treatment” during the transfer, and the “disproportionate use and display of force, including a paramilitary escort and planes and a military presence and dramatic footage as if it was some massive military exercise”.
The transfer of the two Australians under heavy guard, including being escorted by fighter jets, was in stark contrast to the treatment of a Nigerian drug smuggler who on the same day was transported about in a van.
“It seemed that our citizens were singled out for treatment designed to maximise publicity that was certainly at odds with the treatment of other citizens of other countries in the same position,” Bishop said.
Indonesian ambassador to Australia Nadjib Riphat Kesoema has been asked to provide an official explanation, but was in Perth on Thursday and will be summoned to receive a complaint when he returns to Canberra.
Bishop confirmed there had not yet been any word on a date for the executions.
“We have been lead to believe that 72 hours notice is given to the families and that notice has not yet been given,” she said.
Widodo has said “it could be 10 days” before Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 33, are executed.
