Indonesia: The Banality of Executing Drug Convicts

No One is Facing a Firing Squad for Looting the Country

Indonesia, the country which did not earnestly punish one single top military brass for the genocides in East Timor and not one single person for horrendous and ongoing genocide in Papua, is now ready to execute another nine people for drug trafficking. In January 2015 it already slayed six drug convicts including five foreigners, sparking international indignation.

AFP reported:

“Indonesia on Sunday signaled it was determined to push ahead with the execution of eight foreign drug convicts, despite a growing wave of global condemnation led by United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon.

Authorities on Saturday gave formal notice to the eight — from Australia, Brazil, Nigeria and the Philippines — that they would be executed by firing squad imminently, along with an Indonesian prisoner.”

It is hard to overlook the hypocrisy of these trials and executions.

Indonesia is one of the most corrupt nations on earth, where the rich are holding high government positions, openly and shamelessly robbing the poor. But they would never face the firing squad, because they are above the law.

East Timor lost 30 percent of its population during the Indonesian occupation, which amounted to one of the most brutal genocides of the 20th Century. The Indonesian military (TNI) is responsible for killing of between 150,000 (the lowest estimates of the Western-based human rights agencies) and 500,000 Papuans, a country that is brutally occupied and plundered; its agony sustaining the highlife of thousands of Indonesian “elites” in Jakarta. Yet, not one Indonesian soldier is rotting in jail for committing barbarities, and not one politician or business oligarch is facing a firing squad for ordering this unprecedented plunder and extermination campaign. On the contrary: previous and present administrations are full of top commanders who served in East Timor and Papua.

It has to be an underprivileged mother from the Philippines, a schizophrenic Brazilian man, and several poor Nigerians, who have to die, in order to show the world how “moral” and righteous Indonesia really is!

The thugs, mass murderers who killed, with their bare hands, between 1 million and 3 millions of leftists and intellectuals of Indonesia, in 1965/66, are still bragging about their deeds, recalling gross details in the television studios, being applauded by brainwashed and blood thirsty crowd. Nobody in the wildest dreams thinks about throwing them against the wall and executing them for treason and for having served foreign (Western) interests.

The murder rate in Indonesia, is on a per capita basis much higher than even in the United States. The country is sunk in violence. Rape, child abuse (I was recently told that in Surabaya, girls are forced into prostitution at the age of 5 and many of them are thrown to the gutter for being “too old” when they reach the age of 12), mob justice; it is all biasa, normal.

But it has to be a bunch of deranged foreigners, smuggling few kilos of heroin, who are made to face the wall and the bullets!

The religious leaders, mainly Christians but also Muslims (and others), are literally robbing the congregations. To become a preacher, or to become Imam in Indonesia, is the best imaginable job, if one is lazy, stupid and ambitious. Imams are pimping their wives in the Gulf and everybody knows it. Protestant preachers are robbing their followers of tens of millions dollars in Surabaya and other cities, while Catholic priests, like everywhere else in the world, are molesting children. Almost all religious leaders in Indonesia are right-wing bigots and supporters of turbo-capitalism and the pro-Western Indonesian regime. But none of them goes to prison, or if they go, they get out in just a few weeks or months. To steal from the poor is fine! To fool believers is absolutely acceptable. But dare to smuggle few kilograms of drugs (especially if you are a poor foreigner), and you would be hanged!

Public lynching is fine; it is common, all across Indonesia.

To murder more than half of poor animals in the Surabaya Zoo is fairly acceptable, especially if several big business interests are behind the killing.

And above all to ignore, to rob and to humiliate poor fellow citizens (the great majority of Indonesian people is dirt-poor, but it has no voice whatsoever) is truly laudable, something that the rich and famous of Indonesia are always proud of doing!

And nothing changed with this new administration. And nobody is suggesting that the President go to jail for fooling the nation, for mocking the poor, for raping hope!

Driving Range Rovers and Ferraris through the potholes of Jakarta, in full few of those who were mugged of everything so these vehicles could be purchased by corporate mafia and by government officials, is considered glorious in Indonesia.

To have Gucci and Prada boutiques built right near some open sewage where the children from slums are playing is not only “moral”, it is fabulous.

Nobody is facing a firing squad for bringing the country to this level.

And drugs? Elites and their kids do coke and other “recreational” and hard drugs. Everybody knows it. But nobody in Indonesia, in their sane mind, would touch the “elites”, the military or the government officials and their families. You touch them, and you get burned to ashes. After all, it is no secret that Indonesia, since 1965, is a lawless country governed by thugs. Gangs and their leaders cannot be touched.

Therefore, it is just those few foreigners who will have to be “sacrificed”, slaughtered like goats, periodically, in order for Indonesians to feel that they live in a “moral” and lawful society.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are China Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries, Saving Millions of Lives, China and Ecological Civilization with John B. Cobb, Jr, Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, the revolutionary novel Aurora, and Exposing Lies of the Empire. Also watch Rwanda Gambit his documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky On Western Terrorism. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. Read other articles by Andre.