don't cry for her, canberra

Don't Cry for Her, Canberra (Corby)
also: The Spectator (UK): The Whingers of Oz [Eric Ellis on the weeping, xenophobic hysteria in Australia over the conviction of Schapelle Corby for smuggling drugs into Indonesia]
The Straits Times
Friday, June 10, 2005

Commentary

Don't Cry for Her, Canberra

By John McBeth
Senior Writer
The vast indignation of many Australians
over Schapelle Corby's trial may have worked against her when it came
to sentencing. AP

BALI - YEARS after politician Pauline Hanson crashed and burned, Australia is
once again revealing that ugly side of its character which makes Asians
wonder whether Canberra is swimming against the tide in its efforts to become more
engaged in the region.

The uproar over beautician Schapelle Corby, jailed for 20 years by the Bali
District Court last month for smuggling marijuana, has astonished Indonesians
and reinforced perceptions that the social and cultural divide between
Australia and South-east Asia is as wide as ever.

Swayed by her tears and protests of innocence, the media and many Australians
have decided that Corby, 27, is innocent and a victim of Indonesian
injustice. Indonesians wonder what makes her so different from other Australians locked
up in the region for drug offences. New Zealand-born Australian talk show
host Derryn Hinch, who cut his teeth in tabloid journalism, may have explained it
best when he told CNN: 'She's a young woman, she's pretty...'

Unkind, perhaps. But how else to understand the extraordinary media circus,
initially triggered by reports that Corby was facing the death penalty. Maybe,
just maybe, that might have been the case for someone taking delivery of two
containers of marijuana. But capital punishment was never on the cards here.
And even if it was, why not a similar outpouring of concern for the
Vietnamese-Australian on death row in Singapore for a drug offence? Surely the silence
cannot be because he is Asian, can it?

All this raises questions about Australian society itself. For all the Asian
immigration in recent years, there is still a sizeable cross-section of
Australians, many of them European immigrants or the offspring of European
immigrants, who are, let's face it, racist. Xenophobia and colour consciousness are not
peculiar to Australia, of course. Many Asians are unabashed racists as well.
But given their proximity to Asia and the fair bit of travelling they do,
surely most Australians should have got over all that by now?

What would Australians have thought if there was similar outrage by
Indonesians over one of them being convicted of drug trafficking in Australia?

Sure, the Indonesian legal system leaves a lot to be desired - and
Indonesians know that better than anyone. But no one stands to gain anything from the
Corby conviction. At the end of the day, it appeared to be a remarkably
straight-forward trial where the weight of the evidence rested firmly in the hands of
the prosecution.

Corby may come from the class of people known in Australia as 'battlers', but
Indonesians cannot be expected to sympathise on that count. Indonesia is full
of under-privileged people who are a whole lot worse off than she is; people
who can hardly afford the bus fare home let alone travel to a tourist resort
for a week's relaxation. She is also not the first convicted dope trafficker to
protest her innocence and claim to have been set up.

In 1977, 24-year-old English nurse Rita Nightingale became the focus of
equally sympathetic coverage in the British tabloids after she was jailed for 20
years in Thailand on charges of heroin smuggling. She claimed the drugs had been
concealed in her luggage by her boyfriend, without her knowledge, but
American narcotics agents told me she had been under surveillance because she was
suspected of making a previous courier run to Paris. Nightingale was lucky. Three
years later, she was pardoned by King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who has had long
and warm relations with the British royal family.

Harmless as it turned out to be, the white powder delivered to the Indonesian
embassy in Canberra now seems to have taken the steam off the Corby case. The
hordes of Australians crowding Bali airport and sipping sunset cocktails at
the seaside Kudeta restaurant last weekend clearly had not heard of a
threatened Bali boycott. Even the campaigners in Australia seemed to sense it was time
to back off. But after what has transpired, Corby may now find it difficult to
have her jail time reduced on appeal.

What is disquieting in her case is the disparity in the way Indonesian courts
treat drug offenders. Twenty years is a tough sentence for a plant that can
be grown in the backyard. Compare that to the 15 years an Italian defendant
received last year in Bali on charges of trying to smuggle five kg of cocaine. Or
the seven-year sentence handed down to a Mexican woman who was caught with 15
kg of hashish in 2001. Perhaps some of the speculation in Indonesia is
correct: The hysterical media coverage and some of the nasty things said about
Indonesian judges worked against leniency for Corby.

It is disturbing that Australians feel Indonesia owes them something after
the 2002 Bali bombing and the laudable assistance Canberra provided the victims
of last December's tsunami. Yet upholding the law is a totally separate issue.
So are the comparisons being made in Australia to the light sentence given to
Abu Bakar Bashir. The outcome of that case can be laid as much on United
States reluctance to provide key witnesses as anything else.

For all the uproar, there are two things about the Corby case that bothered
fair-minded Indonesians - and a few Australians too. Boogie boards are not very
heavy, so why did she not notice the extra 4 kg when she took it off the
baggage carousel? And if the marijuana had been concealed there by Australian
baggage handlers, how were their accomplices going to recover it at the Bali end?
Certainly, there is reason to think that after passing through two airports on
the way to Bali, the authorities were well aware of what was in the bag.

Then there was the Australian press. Indonesian lawyers say that if the case
had not hit the headlines, there was every possibility Corby would not have
got more than 10 years.

So yes, sometimes my own profession makes me cringe. Back in 1977, a British
tabloid asked me to interview Nightingale and describe Bangkok's Lard Yao
Women's Prison, the supposed 'hell hole' where she was incarcerated. Sure, there
were high walls, but there were also lawns and flower gardens. I found the
prisoner baking cookies in a kitchen. I told the newspaper I could not in all
conscience call it a hell hole.

The story never ran.

-----------------------

The Spectator (UK)
Issue cover-dated
June 11, 2005

The Whingers of Oz

Eric Ellis on the weeping, xenophobic hysteria in Australia over the
conviction of Schapelle Corby for smuggling drugs into Indonesia

Schapelle Corby, the 27-year-old daughter of a fish-and-chip shop
proprietress from Queensland, is not your usual Australian heroine. She is a
drug smuggler, and was last month sentenced by a court in Indonesia to 20
years in prison. Back home, however, they won't hear a word against her.
According to the polls, something like 70 per cent of Australians are either
members of her fan club or keenly sympathetic to her. One can understand the
sympathy - 20 years does seem a bit rough - but the hysterical and
uncritical adulation is bewildering, and very Old Australian.

'Our Schapelle' was convicted of trying to sneak 4.1 kg of 'skunk', a
resin-rich high-quality marijuana, into Bali, the Antipodean Benidorm. She
insists she didn't do it. She says the pillowcase-sized plastic bag of dope
which fitted snugly into her surfboard case and was discovered by customs
agents must have been placed there by dodgy Australian airport
baggage-handlers. The folks back home have bought the story.

For nine months now, Corby's plight has been beamed live into sitting rooms
from Perth to Sydney. It's the ultimate reality TV show. Corby, who seems to
be the only bule (foreigner) in Bali who doesn't sweat, has adapted well to
her starring role. In jail she has slimmed down from a plumpish and brassy
suburban shrill to a demure girl-next-door. Last week she added an elegant
and much-fingered necklace crucifix to her outfit. The news execs love it,
but their concern for Corby contrasts with their apparent indifference to
the plight of the dozen or so other Australians - Asian Australians - held
elsewhere in the region and either charged with or convicted of
drug-smuggling.

Surrounding Our Schapelle is a cast of characters made for the tabloids: a
screeching big sister (Mercedes), a dope-smoking Dad (Mike) and a hysterical
Mum (Ros). But why 'Schapelle'? The Chappell brothers, Ian and Greg,
dominated Australian cricket when the Corbys' younger daughter was born.
Australians everywhere were naming their boys after these heroes. That was
tough for Aussies with daughters. But Ros - or so the story goes - spotted
the feminine possibilities in 'Chappell', and named her new daughter with
what she imagined was a certain je ne sais quoi of Euro-sophistication to
give her new daughter a leg out of the grim Aussie suburbs.

Portly Ros and the beer-gutted Mike have long been estranged but they've
briefly got back together for the sake of their daughter. Mike, who has
cancer and a magnificent salt-and-pepper beard, has taken to visiting his
daughter in prison in the Ocker-Abroad uniform of shorts, singlet and
flip-flops. When someone suggested to him that he might wish to smarten up a
bit out of respect for the local culture, he showed up at the jail the next
day in a singlet bearing the logo of Indonesia's national beer brand,
Bintang. Mike likes to shriek 'Schapelle's cummin' home, she's cummin'
home,' thrusting a triumphant fist in the air as the hacks scribble away.
'How's that gunna happen, mate?' the hackpack inquire. 'In a plane, mate, in
a plane,' yells back Corby, before he's whisked off. Now the hacks are
perplexed. 'Was he takin' the piss?' they ask themselves.

Aussie tourists generously break away from their Bali beach-bar holidays to
lend Corby moral support. Well-meaning, all of them. One Schapellite,
Georgie from Sydney, complained to me on the courtroom steps in Bali that he
couldn't 'hear anything because of the "Mewslims" at the bloody mosque going
off'. I explained that although Indonesia is a mostly Muslim country, Bali
itself is a Hindu island, and the noise that annoys him wasn't the muezzin's
call to prayer but a kidung, a midday Hindu mantra chanted briefly around
the island and ... but I soon lost him.

Back home, as well as being a TV ratings bonanza - Australians call it a
'barbecue stopper' - l'affaire Corby has been big on radio: Australia has a
lively talkback culture. The Sydney radio announcer Malcolm T. Elliott gave
a flavour of white Australian prejudices when he asserted on air that
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono - or 'Wham Bam Thank You Mam
Yiddi-yonio' as he called him - and the Corby judges were monkeys. And here
is Elliott in an exchange with a caller:

Elliott: The judges don't even speak English, mate, they're straight out of
the trees, if you'll excuse my expression.

Caller: Don't you think that disrespects the whole of our neighbouring
nation?

Elliott: I have total disrespect for our neighbouring nation, my friend.
Total disrespect.... Whoa, give them a banana and away they go.

Remarks like this, if uttered in Indonesia or, indeed, most Western
countries, would have resulted in Elliott's appearing before some sort of
race relations tribunal, copping a heavy fine and possibly a jail sentence,
certainly the sack. But in a Schapellised Australia, it barely raised an
eyebrow; Elliott still spouts his objectionable bile over the airwaves.

Since Corby's conviction supporters have even sent bullets with threatening
notes and what appeared to be anthrax-like substances to Jakarta's diplomats
in Australia. (The substances were later found to be harmless, but not
before full-scale terror alerts had been mounted.) Sceptics have been forced
to whisper to each other lest some eavesdropping banshee hurls abuse at them
for daring to doubt Our Schapelle.

Australians fancy they see something of the Gallipoli spirit in Corby. She
has been cast as a humble 'Aussie battler' abandoned by her government and
struggling in vain to overcome an insurmountable foreign adversary. The
enemy is not 'Johnny Turk' this time but the 'brutal' Indonesian legal
system which has the nerve to conduct its affairs in Bahasa Indonesia, not
Australian English. As Corby fans see it, the bases were clearly all loaded
against their girl, the sinister outcome predetermined in Indonesia's murky
shadows.

In fact, Corby's defence came up with little that even vaguely suggested her
innocence. The closest thing to an argument in her favour came from an
Australian criminologist who testified that Corby wasn't the drug-smuggling
type. By Southeast Asian standards, the 20-year sentence was relatively
lenient. The prosecutor backed off from the death penalty and demanded life
instead, and Indonesians took this as a sign that their country is at last
becoming more liberal. If she'd been convicted in Singapore or Malaysia,
she'd have been sentenced to death.

Myriad petitions have been raised in Australia and a thousand 'Free
Schapelle' websites created. Worse, from Canberra's point of view, there
have been calls to boycott Bali and Indonesia, to withdraw aid, and to stop
trade. Australia was the world's most generous donor to the tsunami relief
in Aceh, but now outraged Australians are reneging on their commitment,
wanting their donations back. The Salvation Army was forced to put out a
statement that a recent drive for funds was for needy Australians and not
Indonesia-bound.

Indonesians are bewildered. Sabam Siagian, Jakarta's ambassador in Canberra
from 1991 to 1995, says: 'This needless reaction over her, it's
incomprehensible to me. Australia has always boasted to us that it is an
advanced society but this inexplicable display of emotion has Indonesians
wondering if this is still the case. Australians must understand that this
particular court operated very well, very fairly, that it took its task very
seriously and correctly.' Then, in a backhanded swipe at the army of
Australian academics who build careers analysing 'mysterious' Indonesia, he
adds, 'I think we Indonesians have to make more of an effort to understand
the Australian psychology.'

The reaction is deeply unhinged, and baffling to an Asia that has come to
see Australia as a no-nonsense, logical country, one trying to shake off the
remains of its 'White Australia' policy and engage with their region on its
own terms. But that's not how it is.

In many Australian households, Asia is seen as the place where Bad Things
Happen. Despite their closeness to the region, many Australians have trouble
distinguishing between Asia's disparate cultures. Where Europeans and North
Americans might see an exotic region of boundless economic opportunity, many
Australians still regard their backyard with deep suspicion - a threatening,
teeming hellhole of unscrupulous religious zealots who have dubious toilet
habits, rip you off, speak strange languages and eat cats, dogs and rats
(all overspiced, of course) and are desperate to come to Australia and steal
Australian jobs.

Anyone who dares offer a rational, informed view is likely to be vilified.
When I reported the case in April, I got mail declaring the Indonesians were
'worse than Hitler'. Post a contrarian view to a Corby website and you'll
promptly be banned and abused by its 'moderator'.

The demographer Bernard Salt says the Corby matter explodes what has always
been the myth of Australian egalitarianism. Salt has previously noted,
controversially, that Australia, like most countries, has an educated
minority, a cultural and cosmopolitan elite that directs its politics, its
economy, its popular culture, with the majority functionong as essentially
its market. He says that Australia's cosmopolitans account for at most one
million of the nation's 20 million people.

But the elite aren't calling the shots on this one. There has been talk of a
'redneck coup'. And the circus shows no signs of packing up. A new lawyer
has just been appointed to handle Our Schapelle's appeal. I met him last
week, and he did not disappoint me. His name is Paris Hutapea, and he
carries two sidearms (a Beretta and a Walther), sports shiny blue suits and
an impressive mullet, and drives to work in a Humvee. His fingers drip with
opal and diamond rings. He and big sister Mercedes should hit it off.

Eric Ellis, an Australian, is the Southeast Asian
correspondent for Fortune magazine.