Everyone I expect has made some sort of mistake whether it is big or small but what happens if you weren’t given a second chance for it? Imagine having 62% of Australia saying that they need 8 bullets through your chest because you made a terrible mistake. To pay for your crimes you are taken to an island, handcuffed to a poll and have three minutes to compose yourself before being killed by 12 executioners. This was the case for two Australian men, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran who were caught drug smuggling in Indonesia.

Drug dealers don’t inspire much sympathy, especially when they are the ringleaders of the infamous Bali Nine, who attempted to import more than 8 kilograms of heroin into Australia. There is no doubt that if they were successful those drugs would’ve caused misery to many families but this does not change the fact that these two men should have been saved.

Indonesia is wrong for killing Chan and Sukumaran, two thoroughly reformed characters that have already been punished for their crimes. They could have been further punished, keep them in jail for another 5, 10 even 20 years but to kill them is a crime in itself.

Let’s not forget that much of what passes for justice in Indonesia would leave many sensible people shocked; this is a country where killers and terrorists are set free but someone found in possession of some drugs can find themselves on the death row. Remember the terrorist leaders involved in the Bali bombings which killed 88 Australians, well guess what they were spared from the death penalty.

In the same year the Bali Nine attempted to smuggle heroin, three Muslim militants’ beheaded three Christian girls as they walked to school. The ringleader was given a 20 year sentence and his two accomplices were sentenced to only 14 years. Two men who have not killed anybody were given the death sentence while three people who have taken lives are given a prison sentence. Is there really any logic in that?

We should also not forget that Indonesia is a country where a pregnant victim of gang rape can be publicly whipped for indecency.

The Indonesian justice system is just plainly corrupt. A former lawyer of Chan and Sukumaran claimed that the judges that sentenced the Bali Nine duo to death asked for more than $130,000 to give them a prison term of less than 20 years and they simply did not have that money. This is not a system that deserves our respect, its one characterised by injustice and inconsistency.

I also find the hypocrisy of the Indonesians to be outrageous. They regularly take steps to save the lives of their own citizens facing the death penalty in other countries, but they have executed hundreds of foreigners.

Anyone who was aware of Chan and Sukumaran’s transformation would have wanted to keep them alive. These men were rehabilitated model prisoners who have done a great deal to help others in jail. Both men worked tirelessly to make a positive contribution to prison life in hope of repenting for their crimes in a meaningful way: holding English and art classes as well as psychological guidance to others. Indonesia would have more to gain by keeping these men alive and allowing them to continue their work in jail.

Some may say that these two men deserved what they got but these are real people we are talking about. I agree that these two made terrible choices but did they really deserve to be taken from

their prison bed in the middle of the night, to a remote area, tied to a wooden post before being killed in a hail of bullets.

Earlier this year Indonesia executed 14 people including the Bali Nine duo for drug offences. President Joko Widodo portrayed the executions as the ultimate weapon in a ‘war on drugs’ to protect the country’s young generation from an alleged ‘national drug emergency.’ The Indonesian government, through its anti-drug agency, the National Narcotics Board (BNN) is pushing compulsory treatment for people with drug dependence. They pledge to rehabilitate 100,000 drug users in 2015 and aim to double the numbers every year, 200,000 in 2016 and so on. But the problem here is that there aren’t enough problematic drug users in Indonesia to meet those targets. According to estimates by the Ministry of Health, there are about 74,000 drug users. The numbers that are being stated have been derived using questionable methods and is simply an exaggeration.

Capital punishment is not an effective approach to this supposed ‘drug emergency’ in Indonesia. President Joko even states himself that the number of drug addicts in the country had increased over the past three years even with the death penalty present. So what makes him think that focusing on harsh penalties would reduce the number of drug addicts? Clearly the death penalty is no deterrent to smugglers; Indonesian jails are still overflowing with drug smugglers.

Finally, we also cannot ignore the role of the AFP in tipping of the Indonesian authorities. The AFP knew all along of the Bali Nine’s plans but they did not take any action because apparently ‘there was simply not enough evidence to charge people with conspiracy.’ Indonesia would have not known about the Bali Nine operation if the AFP did not pass on the flight plans and names to Indonesia. To think that if the AFP had waited 6 hours of flight time this arrest could have occurred on Australian soil, these two men would still be with us today.

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For those that still believe that these men deserved to die, would you feel differently if it was one of you family members facing the firing squad?

Mr Joko has vowed that the remaining 58 drug convicts on the death row will face the same fate. If we don’t want to see more lives being lost under the hands of a cruel country, we need to be more consistent in our advocacy and be against the death penalty. No one should have the right to take a life, no one.

- The death penalty does not solve anything.