andrew bolt, re aust. response to corby trial, page-28

Mass hysteria = mob rules

Balinese think Australians are a joke, no dignity, no respect for law.

Says the state-owned New Paper in Singapore, supposedly AustraliaÕs best friend in Asia, ÒUnfair dinkum? Not!Ó Asians are baffled that an Australia they normally see as a no-nonsense and logical country, struggling to shake off a not-too-distant racist past, can so unquestioningly embrace a convicted criminal and be so incapable of accepting a procedure which, for once, was applied by an Indonesian court that maintained its constitutionally enshrined but rarely practised independence.

It may be cold comfort to the majority of Australians who believe Corby is innocent, but her sentence was lenient. A young Balinese woman, tried in an adjacent court but lacking the wherewithal to whip her compatriots into a media frenzy, received 15 years for holding 1.5g of marijuana (about enough for a joint).