Australia treads carefully responding to executions
A worker holds a handful of dry cacao beans ready to sell at a chocolate farm co- op in El Clavo, Venezuela.
CANBERRA, Australia — Australia said it would withdraw its ambassador to Indonesia after two Australians were among eight drug traffickers executed by the Southeast Asian country Wednesday, but was wary of escalating hostilities with its neighbor despite a public outcry.
The executions by firing squad of the eight men — two Australians, four Nigerians, a Brazilian and an Indonesian — attracted wide international condemnation and intense Australian media coverage.
The U. N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said given that Indonesia has asked for clemency for its own nationals facing execution in other countries, “it is incomprehensible why it absolutely refuses to grant clemency for lesser crimes on its own territory.”
But there was unexpected joy in the Philippines, where the government won an 11th- hour stay of execution for a Philippine woman also on death row on a drug conviction.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott — whose country has a pivotal but occasionally brittle relationship with Indonesia — reacted swiftly, announcing that Ambassador Paul Grigson would be recalled this week even before the executions of Myuran Sukumaran, 33, and Andrew Chan, 31, were officially confirmed.
Australia, which has abolished capital punishment, had never before made such a move in retaliation for a citizen’s execution.
“We respect Indonesia’s sovereignty, but we do deplore what’s been done and this cannot be simply business as usual,” Abbott told reporters.
Outraged Australians, meanwhile, called for a cut in foreign aid to Indonesia, less cooperation between the countries’ police forces and a tourist boycott of the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
Australia is angry that Sukumaran and Chan were executed despite having ongoing court appeals, and that Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo ignored evidence of their rehabilitation during their 10 years in prison before rejecting their clemency applications.
Australia and Indonesia’s testy relationship improved a year ago, when Indonesian Ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema returned to Canberra six months after he was recalled over accusations that Australians tapped the phones of the former Indonesian president, his wife and eight ministers and officials in 2009.