Executions put Aust-I'nesia ties back on rocky path

Myuran Sukumaran, 34, and Andrew Chan, 31, the ringleaders of the so-called Bali Nine drug smuggling ring of Australians, were executed early Wednesday on the Nusakambangan penal island off Java, along with six other inmates. Australian political leaders have been so outspoken against the execution of the pair that they may feel they have to do more than simply recall their ambassador, warned Colin Brown, adjunct professor at the Asia Institute at Brisbane’s Griffith University.

Speaking from Indonesia where he is lecturing, Brown said that if Australia decided to impose trade sanctions or cut aid over the executions, Indonesia would probably retaliate. “How far will that go? Megaphone diplomacy doesn’t work with Indonesia,” Brown said. “Indonesians see a fair bit of hypocrisy in Australia’s stand on the execution of the drug smugglers. Australia didn’t protest as loudly when Singapore executed an Australian drug smuggler in 2005, and Australians supported the execution of the Bali bombers.”

It took about eight months to repair bilateral relations after the 2013 revelation that in 2009 Australia had secretly tapped the mobile phone of the wife of then-president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.The thorny issue of asylum seekers and migrant boats headed toAustralia from Indonesian shores has also seen Canberra square off against Jakarta, particularly since the election of Prime Minister Tony Abbott in 2013. 

“Some of our most crucial relations with Indonesia are in security and intelligence, and it will hurt Australia far more than Indonesia if that were to suffer,” Brown said. Former ambassador to Indonesia and founding director of the Asia Society Australia, Richard Woolcott, said the strong statements by Australian political leaders were counterproductive and were widely seen in Indonesia as “intrusive and an intervention in their legal affairs”. Nevertheless, public anger among Australians at the carrying out of the death sentences could in turn affect diplomatic relations, he said. “Popular opinion will play a role,” agreed Brown.

Associate professor Greg Fealy of the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University said the executions will “undoubtedly harm” the relationship.

“President Joko Widodo won’t be welcome in Australia anytime soon,” Fealy said in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald. “A lot of Australians will remember this for some time.”

Fealy said Joko’s long-serving predecessor Yudhoyono had pulled out of a public talk in Australia this week as it coincided with the timing of the execution. Aim Sinpeng, politics lecturer at the University of Sydney, said that Widodo had other things on his mind than ties with Australia. “Widodo is preoccupied with holding his own government together,” she said. “Cold relations with Australia pale into comparison with his domestic problems.” 

But while most experts predicted that the executions were unlikely to affect trade and bilateral relations in the long term, Ross Tapsell, Indonesian politics lecturer at Australian National University, said it was on the social level that relations could suffer the most. “My concern is the executions will perpetuate national stereotypes that were showing signs of breaking down in recent times,” Tapsell said. “Indonesia saw Australia as a white colonial nation who feared invasion from the north. Australians saw Indonesia as a military dictatorship and hotbed of Islamic extremism. The executions will only perpetuate that.” But he does not think anger over the execution in Australia will result in a tourist boycott. 

“Most Australians visit Bali and they don’t see Bali as part of Indonesia anyway. “We have constantly heard from our leaders that we are great friends with Indonesia, but then the Indonesians wouldn’t even answer the phone when the Australian government wanted to talk about the executions. This is bad, and it will remain bad for some time,” Tapsell said.