Look for detailed roundups elsewhere, but here are a few reactions to Schapelle Corby’s 20-year sentence for smuggling drugs into Indonesia, via faves Blair, Swanker, Jakartass and others from tecnorati (ap’s advice, some of you should take it down a few notches, much of the blog commentary on the Corby case is ugly.):
Oz uberblogger Tim Blair is impressed with her defense team.
Jakartass is not related to SillyAsses.
The Swanker asks: "Has Oz gone mad?"
Intellectual Poison says Corby got a "crappy" deal or "got off easy."
Drakk says she probably deserved it.
Shaneybaby severely overreacts: "I say we bomb them and leave them back at square one after the tsunami and walk away."
Alan Singer says he is not boycotting Indonesia but would not "contemplate travelling to that place whilst their legal system is
capable of the travesty of justice that is Schapelle Corby."
tauri is pissed, and will be active in freeing Corby, but won’t advocate a boycott of Bali.
‘Me’ says the Corby affair has "highlighted how much of Australia is made up of ignorant rednecks."
May 31st, 2005 at 4:24 pm
Saint Schapelle Corby
Phil asked me by email why I’ve not commented on Schapelle Corby. My reply:…
June 1st, 2005 at 5:41 pm
This is Indonesian government and people from a non australian.
Read the titles firs please and then refer to brief explanation beneath.
-How you have been treated? (Read item 1)
-How you have reacted? (item2)
-Can you only try to justify your country’s action on this case? (3)
-Is the way in which you treated Australians and people worldwide acceptable or right? (Read 4)
-What you are asked to do? (Read 5)
-why you must end this problem? (Read 6)
1) Wasn’t it on April 3 that Five Navy personnel, three Royal Australian Air Force members and one Army soldier were killed and two were seriously injured when the Australian Sea King helicopter crashed as it was landing in a remote part of island of Nias looking for casualties of then last week earthquake in a remote area not visited by relief workers?
Didn’t Australians accept the dangers of such operation to help you? Isn’t it the actual and real maximum sacrifice? Isn’t it sacrificing their lives to have helped you?
How much money did Australians spend to support the relief operation? How much on rebuilt program?
Do they have a magic well from which they extract dollars?
Let me tell you, many of them still live in buildings made at least partly from asbestos which causes cancer and they suffer from this horrible disease yet they were humane and kind and nice and generous enough to allocate the budget gathered from taxes on their hard earned income to the emergency relief operation of tsunami in Indonesia rather than spending it on building safer houses for themselves.
Can’t you feel that this money could have saved some Australian lives? Isn’t even their financial aid another actual form of sacrifice?
2) ON THE OTHER HAND, what was your actual and tangible answer to the people of Australia and worldwide? How they found it?
Again, I am telling you, you answered all those humane helps of Australians IN AN EXTREMELY BAD AND OFFENSIVE WAY (I am saying it very very politely because my aim is the freedom of Ms Schapelle Corby not creating tensions).
You have invaded humanity you have created increasing pain for the people all over the world, you have burned the heart of all the people who watched those scenes from Indonesian court (I am hiding my emotions for the mentioned reason).
YOU HAVE KEPT MS CORBY IN THAT HELISH HOLE UNDER HARSH CONDITIONS WITH GRIME AND ARE ENJOYING ATTENTION (IT HAS NOT SHOWN THE POWER OR EXISTENCE OF JUSTICE SYSTEM THERE, IT HAS PROVEN ITS ABSENCE THERE).
3) YOU CAN NOT ANSWER DIPLOMATICALLY, your diplomacy has angered public opinion, you have to do something positive enough and actual and satisfying and URGENT to calm the public opinion. It was the individuals who were helping you, donating to you, thinking about you, sympathizing with you, encouraging Australian government to do more, it was the media like CNN which brought the help demand of desperate Indonesian victims to the homes of people all over the world, consequently, American helicopters and navy rushed to the region. Wasn’t it SO? Can you deny it?
It was the public opinion which changed your circumstances not the diplomatic condolence massages written on paper for your president.
THE MOST CRUEL AND BLOOD SHEDER DICTATORS HAVE HAD EFFECTIVE DIPLOMATIC SYSTEMS, DO NOT BOAST TO YOURS. WAS IT GOOD IF INSTEAD OF URGENT HELP TO RELIEVE YOU FROM PAIN OF TSUNAMI, THE WORLD WOULD UNDERGO TIME TAKING DIPLOMATIC PROCEDURES?
4) CERTAINLY NOT
Why? Yesterday, CNN broadcast demonstrations by afghan widows who had received help from the kidnapped Italian lady. Those women were poor, tired, depraved, injured and suffered for centuries of bad events (most recently Talebans). YET, they proved that they do have humane instinct and nature, they showed their loyalty and gratitude to that kidnapped lady, they urged the kidnapers to free her, by this way in fact they proved themselves as humans they were not beautiful (arisen from their sufferings) instead they proved their nature as ‘beautiful and humane’.
What about Iraqis? Do they know the meaning of gratitude? Their disabled who received help from the late Margaret Hassan proved the existence of concept of gratitude in their culture by their demonstration for her release.
Is your country more in trouble than those two? Of course not.
HOW DID YOU SHOW YOUR GRATITUDE TO AUSTRALIANS AND HUMANS ALL OVER THE WORLD WHO HELPED YOU?
YOU HAVE BEEN UNACCEPTABLY INGRATITUDE.
5) I have been witnessing how it was being tried from the start of this humanity disaster to show this as a complicated dilemma. While it is not:
All the people know that some considerations caused the Indonesian bomber to receive very light sentence of few years.
NOW MR PRESIDENT (INDONESIAN), THE INCREASING NUMBER OF PEOPLE WORLDWIDE ARE PERSISTENTLY DEMANDING YOU TO CONSIDER THE VERY HUMANITY PRINCIPLE OF GRATITUDE AND TO END THIS SITUATION OF MS SCHAPELLE CORBY, FREED HER OR SEND HER TO AUSTRALIA.
6) Why you must do it?
-The very clear and obvious injustice comparing the sentences issued for Indonesian bomber and Ms Corby.
- All the help which you have received from Australia and the world.
-you are a retired Indonesian army general and are supposed to have even a little more power and content than those miserable yet humane afghan women or those poor disabled Iraqis.
FREED MS SCHAPELLE CORBY OR SEND HER TO AUSTRALIA URGENTLY.
IT IS NOT A MATTER TO BE FORGOTTEN OR FORGIVEN, AND JUDGEMENT DAY IS INEVITABLE.