Bruce Watson from Kentucky writes about two of the Bali Nine Australian drug traffickers.
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THIS week the world has been sharing the tragic memories of the Holocaust survivors, particularly the terrible experiences in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Also this week, we have been bombarded by all sorts of people demanding that the two Australian convicted drug traffickers in Indonesia be spared from the death penalty.
The two media stories stand in stark relief. Yet, both highlight how ordinary people can be destroyed by the evil that criminals do.
Both demand our attention and our considered responses. Both also reveal that some human beings ignore the consequences of their actions; their search for power or money is more important to them than the harm they do to other people.
The Nazis could exist because people in a democratic system saw no immediate harm in their activities. They soon had to confront their errors of judgment, while human misery expanded around them.
Many people appear to believe there is no real harm in the people convicted of drug dealing.
We are being told the two Australian men have “reformed themselves”. Ms Sheehan’s letter in The Northern Daily Leader on Thursday insists “Chan and Sukumaran have bettered many Balinese prisoners’ lives” and “we owe it to each other to give them a second chance”.
Ms Sheehan forgets that what we might think is irrelevant to the Indonesians. They are struggling with immense problems in the drug trade, largely caused by Australian demand for it.
Indonesia’s porous borders and geographical position are almost impossible to control. Indonesian society is suffering from the drug trade in the region.
Ms Sheehan also forgets that Chan and Sukumaran made their decision to engage in drug smuggling, despite the overwhelming Australian revulsion and our own laws against it.
They chose to ignore all the messages in schools and public discussions about the dangers of drugs and their destructive consequences in our society.
These men totally disregarded the health and safety of numerous Australian drug users and unthinking young people. They saw only the potential wealth they could accrue for themselves.
Ms Sheehan’s support for the mercy merchants manipulating our personal compassion for two convicted drug peddlers is misplaced. We should be mourning the lost lives of the young and vulnerable, the addicts among us.
And we should celebrate that at least one drug-smuggling attempt has been thwarted.
Just as we are also mourning the lost lives of the victims of the Nazis – millions of disabled people, Roma, communists, prisoners of war, Jews and homosexuals, among others – we should insist the criminals among us should accept the consequences of their actions.
Mercy misguided only reduces its meaning and its importance in our lives.