Australian Bali Nine member, Renae Lawrence, who served 13 years in an Indonesian prison for drug smuggling, has used Joko Widodo’s arrival in Australia to plead for clemency for the remaining five members of the group still in prison.
Lawrence, along with eight other Australians, was arrested in 2005 for attempting to smuggle 8kg of heroin from Bali to Australia, and in 2006 was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In November 2018, Lawrence was released from prison for good behaviour and allowed to return to Australia, where she has maintained a very low profile, shunning the media.
But Widodo’s visit to Australia, where he will become only the second Indonesian leader to address the parliament on Monday, prompted Lawrence to seek out the public spotlight to plead on behalf of Michael Czugaj, Matthew Norman, Scott Rush, Si Yi Chen and Martin Stephens, who remain in Indonesian prisons.
All five men were sentenced to life in prison with no hope of release for their role in the smuggling ring.
Lawrence said it was time for the men to come home, and asked Australian prime minister Scott Morrison to plead their case with his Indonesian counterpart, during the official visit.
“I have no quarrel with the Indonesian legal system but I continue to worry about these five young men who, if they had received the same sentence as me, may well have been back in Australia with their families by now,” a clearly nervous Lawrence told media assembled at a Canberra hotel at her request.
“Their families constantly travel to Indonesia to visit their sons at great expense. Yet their anguish remains and as each year goes by these young men are losing hope. We acknowledge that we did the wrong thing and we continue to apologise to the Indonesian Government and the citizens of Indonesia for our stupidity.
“If it were possible that they be granted a determinant sentence that hope would return.
“Should that not be possible then a prisoner exchange between Australia and Indonesia would enable more ready access to their Australian sons and indeed Indonesian families more ready access to their sons and daughters that are in an Australian prison.
“These humane actions would in some small part bring our nations further together.”
Immediately following her statement, Lawrence delivered the same message in Bahasa for the Indonesian press.
The Indonesian government executed two members of the Bali Nine group, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, in November 2015, despite an almost decade-long campaign to commute their death sentences.
Indonesian authorities reported a third member, Tan Duc Thanh Nguyen, died in prison from stomach cancer in 2018.
Lawrence became the only member of the group to be released in 2018. She had been praised by the governor of Bangli prison, as a model prisoner.
The Australian arm of Amnesty International has also urged Morrison to raise the West Papua human rights situation with Widodo during the bilateral talks, on behalf of the 56 indigenous West Papuans and one Indonesian being held in prison on treason charges.
The group face life in prison, if convicted.
