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Keywords: Death Penalty

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Allow Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumuran to flourish

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 February 2015
    21 Comments

    While people are alive there is the possibility, admittedly sometimes remote, that they will respond by reflecting on their lives, becoming deeper and more generous as human beings, making connections with others and contributing even in small ways to the happiness of others and to society. Capital punishment brutally excludes possibility and leaves all of us the smaller for it.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Nice guy Jokowi a death penalty strong man

    • Pat Walsh
    • 04 February 2015
    17 Comments

    The execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran is expected to take place on Nusakembangan, a prison island off Central Java. Visitors there are greeted by a sign which translates: 'They are not criminals, just lost people, and it is never too late to repent'. To be executed after you repent, however, is certainly too late. It also diminishes Indonesia. But let’s not write Indonesia off.     

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Accommodating Indonesia's capital punishment barbarism

    • Michael Mullins
    • 19 January 2015
    12 Comments

    Bali Nine drug runners Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan are on track to be executed by firing squad during the first half of this year. Tony Abbott deserves praise for his statement abhorring the death penalty, but not for his qualification that Australia should avoid jeopardising its relationship with Indonesia by its representations on behalf of Sukumaran and Chan. Such caution did not apply when Australia turned back asylum seeker boats, and any Indonesian upset did not last long.  

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Julie Bishop's opportunity to press PNG on death penalty

    • Michael Mullins
    • 16 September 2013
    6 Comments

    PNG prime minister Peter O'Neill has resolved to see the death penalty handed to the murderers of two porters killed during last Tuesday's attack on a group of Australian and New Zealand trekkers. Australia's incoming foreign minister Julie Bishop needs to remind PNG that Australia opposes the death penalty, and that it will curry no favour with Australia by executing criminals who harmed Australians. 

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  • RELIGION

    Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings

    • Frank Brennan
    • 12 October 2012
    2 Comments

    Fr Frank Brennan SJ's paper 'Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings' presented at the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Australians Against Capital Punishment Dinner, Red Hill, Brisbane, 12 October 2012, Commemorating the 10th World Day Against the Death Penalty.

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  • RELIGION

    Indonesian and Australian justice

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 June 2011
    5 Comments

    At a gallery opening in Bali, the Australia-Indonesia relationship was compared to a rope with many strands, with art and culture the most resilient. In the audience were Australian lawyers who have supported members of the Bali Nine, and lawyers acting for Indonesian minors still held in long term detention in Australia without charge.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    The logic of the Bali death machine

    • Peter Hodge
    • 04 March 2009
    3 Comments

    In Kafka's 'The Penal Colony', a brutal, archaic killing device is valued more highly than the law it enforces. As members of the Bali 9 continue to languish, we ask whether 'because the law says so' is sufficient reason for them to die.

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  • RELIGION

    Killing people for killing people

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2008
    9 Comments

    'For me, talk of the death penalty evoked the young, frightened faces of Scott and Emmanuel, as well as the laughing, haughty faces of Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra.' Full text from Frank Brennan's session on 'Killing People for Killing People', Ubud Writers Festival, 17 October 2008.

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  • RELIGION

    Neither Scott nor Amrozi deserves death

    • Frank Brennan
    • 17 October 2008
    31 Comments

    We should feel deep regret when the bullets pierce the hearts of the Bali Bombers. Neither just nor useful, the death penalty is immoral. Prime Minister Rudd is well positioned to contribute to its abolition.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Amrozi: What would Batman do

    • Paul Mitchell
    • 18 August 2008
    13 Comments

    Imagine Kevin Rudd in a Batman suit, and soon-to-be executed Bali bomber Amrozi as the Joker. Would the caped crusader's 'rule' — that he not become a monster to stop one — compel him to intercede on the smiling assassin's execution?

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  • RELIGION

    Loose reasoning on death penalty - Frank Brennan

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 October 2007

    We think it is wrong for foreign states to impose the death penalty on Aussie drug traffickers and drug mules. But we apply different reasoning to non-Australians facing death at the hands of the state. The practical, hands on, Aussie approach often plays fast and loose with moral reasoning about what is right and wrong.

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