Will Thailand Realize Its Submarine Quest?

 

Bangkok inches closer towards realizing its long-deferred dream.

As I have written previously, Thailand has been looking to procure up to three submarines by the end of the decade, finally giving the country a capability it has lacked for more than sixty years.

As I wrote then, Thailand has lacked a submarine capability since 1951 and has tried but failed since the 1990s to ink submarine deals with several countries, including most recently Germany and South Korea. While it is clear that Thailand’s submarine quest has once again become a top priority under the ruling military junta since it took over last May, past experience suggests that renewed efforts in this direction ought to be viewed with caution.

Yet recent reports suggest that Thailand’s submarine plans are surging ahead. Last week, the Thai navy formally submitted its request to the Thai government for cabinet approval. The navy has also set up a submarine procurement committee headed by the assistant commander-in-chief of the RTN, Admiral Narongpol na Bangchang. The Bangkok Post cited an unnamed source as saying that this committee can be expected to look at potential deals from several countries and make a decision within three months.

While any number of concerns could get in the way of Thailand’s submarine quest, Thai defense minister Prawit Wongsuwon, known to be a strong backer of the submarine quest, has reportedly put the odds of the country achieving its submarine quest at more than 50 or 60 percent. That’s pretty bullish, considering the country’s past record.

Of course, there is still a long way to go. We still do not have much additional clarity on where the submarines will be bought from, except that various players have been providing more information to Thailand as it deliberates. Previous reports had suggested that based on a budget of around 36 billion baht ($1.1. billion), the South Korean Bogo Class submarine might be preferred, and more recent ones have cited naval sources as saying that Bangkok views Chinese submarines as too unreliable. And as Thai navy chief Admiral Kraisorn Chansuvanich recently pointed out, even if the government were to approve the submarine purchase today, time will be needed to build the ships and send personnel for training for one or more years, which means that it will take five or six years before they can enter the service.

Given this, Kraisorn urged the government to approve the submarine purchase soon. He once again repeated how important this capability would be for Thailand’s defense, particularly given that several of its neighbors have had submarines for years. It remains to be seen, however, whether these considerations will be overridden once more by other concerns and delay Thailand’s submarine quest yet again. By Prashanth Parameswaran for The Diplomat

How Asia’s Richest Man Is Connected to China’s Leaders-Plus, Hong Kong’s splintered protest movement and China’s take on the Baltimore riots. Friday China links.

How Asia’s Richest Man Is Connected to China’s Leaders

Plus, Hong Kong’s splintered protest movement and China’s take on the Baltimore riots. Friday China links.

Your weekly round-up of China links:

The lead-off story this week: the long-awaited investigation into the finances of billionaire Wang Jianlin and his Wanda Group firms, which have grown from real estate to encompass the film and entertainment industry. The investigation, by Michael Forsythe, was the subject of a major controversy back in 2013, when the story was allegedly killed by Bloomberg’s editor-in-chief out of fears that it would incite China’s rage. Forsythe left Bloomberg soon after the controversy broke and is now with the New York Times, where he published the Wang story this week.

As with previous exposés of financial ties between Party elites and big business, the piece does not allege that any actual wrongdoing took place. But the story does illuminate financial ties between Wanda companies and family members of some of China’s top leaders, including former Premier Wen Jiabao, former President Hu Jintao, and even current President Xi Jinping.

In other news, Xinhua released its take on the Baltimore protests and riots in a commentary on Wednesday. Xinhua highlighted both racial and economic disparities in its piece and called on the United States to address its own human rights problems. “American democracy is under serious attack and we call upon the government to act and act swiftly,” Ngande Mwanajiti, the former head of the Inter African Network for Human Rights and Development, told Xinhua.

In the latest news on China’s land reclamation projects in the South China Sea, Reuters reports that the chief of the PLA Navy, Admiral Wu Shengli, told his U.S. counterpart that American vessels could also benefit from the construction work. The United States and other countries are “welcome” to use the new facilities, Wu said, “when conditions are right to have cooperation on humanitarian search and rescue and disaster relief.” Wu also dismissed the idea that China’s presence in the South China Sea would pose a threat to freedom of navigation.

As Hong Kong moves into the next stage of debate over the fate of legislation that would reform its electoral system, Foreign Policy has a timely article on how the protest movement has fractured since the “Umbrella Movement” of last fall. The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS), one of the orchestrators of the 2014 protests, is facing schisms. Critics saying the organization itself isn’t democratic enough. Some protestors are also ready to throw out the HKFS emphasis on peaceful protests. To achieve real gains, some voices argue, protestors “need to act more like Malcolm X, and less like Martin Luther King Jr.” That has worrying implications for what the next round of protests might look like.

Finally, to start your weekend out on a lighter note: The New York Times’ David Borenstein has a short documentary and write-up on the “rent-a-foreigner” business in China. Borenstein explains:

In provincial West China, I filmed specialty firms that collect groups of foreigners whom they rent out to attend events. Clients can select from a menu of skin colors and nationalities; whites are the most desirable and expensive. The most frequent customers are real estate companies. They believe that filling their remote buildings with foreign faces, even for a day, suggests that the area is “international,” a buzzword in provincial areas that often translates to “buy.”

The Diplomat

An Israeli Lobby in China? - There is a growing Jewish advocacy within China.

There is a growing Jewish advocacy within China.

Earlier this year, StandWithUs (SWU), a pro-Israeli American advocacy group that coordinates its activities closely with the Israeli government, finally unveiled an SWU-China division for its organization in an event that marked a joint celebration of the Chinese New Year and Jewish Tu B’Shvat in Jerusalem (involving, interestingly enough, talks by three Israel Defense Force soldiers from China’s Kaifeng Jewish community).

The creation of SWU-China follows years of tentative public diplomacy and engagement that started around 2009, and in which China has increasingly been identified by the SWU leadership “as a country in which we can make a difference,” according to SWU’s Director Michael Dickson. He saw the SWU playing a major role in combating “misinformation in the Chinese media about Israel” and “Islamic anti-Israel propaganda on university campuses.” This would be accomplished, according to Ayala Sherman-Oren, the SWU-Asia director, by “utilizing social media, university programs, and networking events” that would serve “to connect and cultivate relationships between Israel’s and Asia’s business professionals and social leaders” – effectively, “the next generation of the Chinese leadership.”

SWU’s outreach into China is but the latest manifestation of a growing decade-long trend in which a network of loosely affiliated pro-Israeli organizations – largely Jewish American in character – and embracing a number of think tanks, universities, lobbyist groups, philanthropist foundations, and activist-scholars, are actively seeking to alter Chinese perceptions of Israel, with a particular focus on effecting this change among influential academic and policymaking institutions and universities there. The assumption underlying this approach is that in the absence of traditional channels for lobbying in China, influencing such centers of knowledge production becomes the only effective means of re-shaping Beijing’s views in ways that may serve Israeli interests over the long run. Many of these groups have traditionally been involved in pro-Israeli advocacy outreach in the United States and bring with them considerable logistical, organizational, and even ideational experience not to mention specific models of advocacy that they seek to reproduce within China.

Three Trends

What is driving this phenomenon in China? It can be attributed to three major developments or trends. The first relates to the emergence of a more consolidated pro-Israeli “academic-focused” campaign in the United States from the early 2000s. This trend was catalyzed largely by a growing perception among Jewish-American organizations in the late 1990s that Israel was suffering an “image problem” on American campuses, reflected in the vocalization of pro-Palestinian sentiments. This was epitomized in the entrenchment of anti-Israel attitudes in Middle East Departments, the proliferation of endorsements for the “Boycott, Disinvestment, and Sanctions” (BDS) campaigns, as well as the spread of “Students for Justice in Palestine” chapters across the country, among other indicators.

Major pro-Israeli foundations and groups responded in a number of ways, including the creation of an Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC) embracing over thirty-three organizations (including the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the American Jewish Committee, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Virtual Library, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center) which would, according to one spokesperson from the Israeli Foreign Ministry “evaluate the worrisome rise in anti-Israel activities on college campuses across North America”; the funding of numerous Israel Studies Programs (ISP) across the United States (the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2005 reported on this trend, noting that Jewish American philanthropists “sought to counter what they [saw] as a pro-Palestinian propagandist view of Israel by endowing chairs, centers, and programs in Israel studies”); and more generally the construction of various bodies – like the Schusterman Centre in Brandeis University or the Schusterman-funded Israel Institute (2012) in Washington D.C. – that would offer guidance, networking, and faculty development grants aimed at wresting back control of the narrative on American campuses. Many of these Jewish-American initiatives are coordinated and implemented in conjunction with the Israeli government which sees such campaigns as necessary and complementing its own public diplomacy efforts (Brand Israel) – which picked up considerable steam from 2006 onwards – to counteract growing criticisms and calls of support for BDS.

The second development concerns the growth of interest – both within Israeli officialdom and the activist pro-Israeli American Jewish community – in China itself. This interest mirrored the global enthusiasm surrounding China’s rise observed globally, but by the 2000s it had morphed (in ways that interestingly mimic similar tendencies in Arab countries at roughly the same time) into a more obviously strategic interest in the role China might play in the Middle East. This is augmented by the perception that China’s cultural, religious and political foundations (its lack of an anti-Semitic legacy and presumed “Oriental” civilizational affinity with Jews) render it a potential friend and even ally of Israel and the global Jewish community. This is reinforced still further when taking into account China’s interest in Israeli technology (where considerable academic cooperation takes place) and weaponry, hand in hand with its complete disinterest in participating in any economic sanctions against Israel, BDS or otherwise. The appeal of this is accentuated – in the eyes of the Israeli and Jewish-American right-wing – by the fact that it comes at a time when Europe and even the U.S. appear to be succumbing – according to Netanyahu at least – to a “wave of Islamization, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.”

More importantly, there is a perception that the Chinese pubic and elite are increasingly receptive to Israeli security and anti-secessionist discourses in so far as both states presumably share similar problems in dealing with restive Muslim populations (the ongoing escalation of violence in Xinjiang and the associated acts of terror, most notably the knives attack in Kunming, have helped foster a “War on Terror” mentality within the country) and various territorial disputes with their neighbors. Naturally, these various narratives are espoused widely by pro-Israel advocacy groups already operating in China, although the most comprehensive discussion on these takes place in Shalom Wald’s 120-page strategy paper published for the Jewish People’s Public Policy Institute, titled “China and the Jewish People: Old Civilization in a New Era.” In it, Wald stresses the need for non-Israeli Jewish organizations (mostly American), whom he deems as being less problematic in the Chinese context due to Arab and Muslim sensibilities regarding Israeli ones, to take on the role of creating an academic infrastructure in China that would guarantee them the ability to influence Chinese policymaking on issues of ‘existential’ concern for the Jewish people and Israel.

The third trend is connected to the emergence of an indigenous Judaic academic infrastructure in China during the 1980s and 1990s with ties to various Jewish-American organizations. During the “honeymoon” period, a limited space was opened for Chinese scholars to pursue independent research on issues and topics related to Judaism and, more significantly, to reach out to foreign groups abroad mostly as a way to procure funding, materials and networking opportunities. Officials permitted these links as a way to both create alternative political channels with Israel prior to 1992, and to foster ties with groups perceived to have an influence on U.S. politics. Following the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and China in 1992, these links with both Israeli and American organizations grew exponentially, fueled in part by the optimism that pervaded the early Oslo years and the Chinese government’s lifting of the various taboos surrounding the discussion of Israel and Zionism within academic circles in China.

It is worth underlining that much of the early engagement between Chinese academia and pro-Israeli groups was still being driven by Chinese scholars themselves – for a variety of professional, academic, and monetary reasons. Xu Xin – the head of the Nanjing Judaic Studies Institute – is an illustrative example of this dynamic. Since the late 1980s, Xu Xin has actively courted significant funding from the American Jewish community to back his many projects concentrated in Nanjing University, which range from the Institute of Jewish Studies (later renamed in 2006 the Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish Studies), a Judaica library to multiple workshops held for Chinese scholars and students interested in Judaism and Israel.

The convergence of these three trends produced the current advocacy phenomenon that has emerged in China from the mid-2000s and onwards: Jewish American organizations, with a new-found appreciation for China as a result of the changing discourses about Israel and Zionism in the West, and building on a pre-existing Judaic Studies infrastructure (as well as a more permissive political atmosphere in China at the end of the decade) began to reproduce the academic advocacy model developed in the U.S. throughout the country. This was initially expressed through the holding of low-key workshops and conferences (with Peking University or Shanghai Jiaotong) by major organizations such as the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation and the Schusterman Foundation, that would supposedly aim to “rectify misinformation about Israel” held by those who Sanford R. Cardin (president of the Schusterman Foundation) identified as having “a direct hand in shaping Chinese policy toward the Middle East.”

By 2010, however, advocacy efforts had become far more pronounced, and had given way to the formation of a dedicated NGO called the Sino-Israel Global Network and Academic Leadership (SIGNAL), created in 2011 to help create “a broad-based academic framework that will foster long-term alliances between Israel and China.” Although seemingly the brainchild of the Israeli Yale University graduate Catrice Witte, SIGNAL is actually a by-product of collaborative efforts on the part of Jewish American organizations, with a degree of backing from the Israeli government. SIGNAL receives its funding from a slew of major donors, including the Klarman Foundation, implicated according to some reports in supporting the construction of illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank. SIGNAL also boasts a web of affiliations with Israel-based universities, Israeli and conservative American think tanks, and various advocacy organizations. One should also not forget the “ideological” affiliations with the likes of Henry Kissinger, Bernard Lewis, and a slew of former Israeli Ministry of Defense officials and Mossad heads, some of whom espouse “hawkish” and in certain cases “pro-settlement” views.

With these resources and connections at its disposal, SIGNAL has made considerable strides in China over a short period of time. Between 2011 and 2013, SIGNAL successfully established six ISPs across the country, with another five under development. Supplementing this, SIGNAL co-sponsors a four-month long training program with Bar Illan University and Yad Vesham that is typically funded by Schusterman Scholarships or grants from the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation. It usually begins with a nineteen-day Holocaust seminar at Yad Vesham, where participants are exposed to Jewish historical narratives, and involves exposure to Israeli understandings of its national founding and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Some participants are sent to Brandeis University in the U.S. and are enrolled in seminars and courses connected with Schusterman-backed entities such as the Israel Institute. SIGNAL also provides books and other resources (supplied by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, the AJC and many others) for these ISPs.

Beyond these programs, SIGNAL is involved in other activities, including arranging strategic dialogues with Chinese think tanks and government organizations, providing a media platform on weibo for Israeli discourses, and arranging extensive country-wide lecture tours by Israeli or pro-Israeli speakers, including individuals such as Saul Singer (famous for his book, Startup Nation), Harold Rhode (a former U.S. state Department official with ties to the neoconservative movement and the Clarion Fund), and Dore Gold (a former Israeli ambassador to the UN as well as head of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Policy). SIGNAL has also tried to cultivate channels of strategic dialogue with key government-associated research think tanks in order to promote “a more accurate understanding of Israel and the region.”

SIGNAL’s activism in the Chinese scene appears to have peaked sometime between 2012 and 2014. While still pursuing its various objectives and tasks – and even picking up some of those “abandoned” by other groups such as The Israel Project – its importance in the context of pro-Israeli advocacy appears to be declining somewhat as more foundations and groups, far more familiar with China than ever before, enter the scene independently or continue to follow their own projects. (For instance, the Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation offered Xu Xin’s institute in Nanjing a major $1 million endowment in 2012 that transformed it into “The Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish and Israeli Studies”) This might reflect growing concerns surrounding the effectiveness of SIGNAL, communicated to me in the past by certain scholars and those involved in pro-Israeli advocacy in China.

In any case, what is obvious is that among certain advocacy circles in the U.S. there is a growing interest in and appreciation of China that comes as a reaction to both its global ascendancy as well as a changing global landscape towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These groups are surmounting successfully traditional impediments, establishing nearly a dozen ISPs in China, cultivating links with key think tanks and groups, and engaging the Chinese public through a variety of channels and mediums (a success that could be amplified considerably given the lack of similar initiatives emanating from alternative sources). While it is certainly difficult to gauge how successful these new trends in advocacy will be in effecting a change in China’s foreign policy over the long-run – especially when taking into consideration the structural and ideational challenges they face – and whether in fact we can speak of an “Israel lobby,” it is a trend well worth watching either way.

Mohammed Al-Sudairi is an LSE-Peking University graduate student. He spent two years in Beijing studying Chinese and undertaking freelance research.

 

Why the U.S. “war on terra” is a fraud

A new scathing report by the Nobel prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility has revealed that more than 1.3 million people were killed only during the first ten years of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. What was formerly known as GWOT — or, in Dubya-speak, “war on terra” — was Orwellianized by the Obama administration into “Overseas Contingency Operations” (OCO).

Crucially, the report does not even cover OCO’s trail in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Yemen (one war “won” by NATO/AFRICOM; one ongoing civil war; and two targets of Obama’s nefarious “kill list”.) Moreover, the figures on AfPak and Iraq are far from being the latest. And the total estimate of lethal casualties is considered “conservative”.

The record shows that this OCO killing machine ran amok for almost 15 years against whole swathes of the planet — not to mention burning trillions of dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds — and had absolutely zero effect in containing terrorism. Rather the contrary; Asia Times readers are aware of how I’ve defined GWOT as the gift that keeps on giving.

And it all started way before 9/11 — and the official Dubya enshrinement of GWOT.

Where’s my jihadi visa?

One just needs to read Michael Springmann’s book Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World. Springmann, a former State Department official, currently practices law in the Beltway. Crucially, he was the head of the visa section of the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between 1987 and 1989. Until, as part of a very convoluted story, he lost his job; and embarked on the long and winding road towards becoming a whistleblower.

Springmann’s revelation that the Jeddah consulate was a CIA base comes as no surprise — as the free flow of visas was essential to the so-called “Arab Afghans” who were engaged in the 1980s jihad against the former USSR.

And the ball kept rolling. While researching his book, Springmann also found out that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 got their visas in Saudi Arabia; 11 in Jeddah and 4 in Riyadh. Springmann discovered these visas were approved by one Shayna Steinger – “hired directly out of Columbia University with a master’s degree as an FSO4, which is a very high rank for somebody right out of school with no background, experience, or training. And she was supposed to have given very questionable answers to the 9/11 Commission investigating what went on in Jeddah.”

After 9/11, Springmann also tried to get in touch with the FBI to tell his story. He’s still waiting for their call (Lars Schall’s interview with Springmann is here.)

Springmann has no doubt the whole genesis of the “war on terra”, pre-9/11, was a racket involving the CIA and the State Department. As he writes, “the international terrorists the United States recruited for wars in Afghanistan and Bosnia thirty-odd years ago are still involved in the fighting elsewhere today. Bosnia wasn’t the only place those saddle tramps and gunslingers were employed. The visas the State Department issued to them then are now tied to the current administration’s continuing wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. The fanatics I saw get travel papers during my time at Jeddah are either directly involved in or trained those directly involved in fighting U.S. forces today.”

Talk to the RAND

There’s nothing new under the GWOT/OCO sun. GWOT/OCO is a mere rebranding of what the Pentagon in the early “axis of evil” days of the Cheney regime called the Long War. And its future was duly conceptualized later on in 2008 by the RAND Corporation report Unfolding the Future of the Long War.

RAND clearly prescribed what has become the new normal. Washington supports the petrodollar GCC racket – House of Saud on top – whatever happens, always in the interest of containing “Iranian power and influence”; diverts Salafi-jihadi resources toward “targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East,” especially in Iraq and Lebanon, hence “cutting back … anti-Western operations”; and keeps propping up al-Qaeda — and ISIS/ISIL/Daesh — GCC sponsors and “empowering” viciously anti-Shi’ite Islamists everywhere to maintain “Western dominance.”

Technically, the Long War is a fabulous bonanza for the industrial-military complex. Geopolitically, it cuts both ways; it wreaks havoc via Divide and Rule across the Muslim world, and is also a war by proxy on Iran.

Few will remember that the Long War concept was first formulated in the “axis of evil” era by the Highlands Forum, a relatively obscure, neo-con infested Pentagon think tank. Not accidentally the RAND Corporation is a major “partner”.

And now, with Long War practitioners such as current Pentagon supremo “Ash” Carter, his deputy Robert Work, and Pentagon intelligence chief Mike Vickers, in charge of the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration’s military strategy, continuity is the new normal.

And diversification, of course. Nick Turse’s new book, Tomorrow’s Battlefield: US. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa reads like a hallucinatory trip along the Pentagon’s pivot to virtually the whole continent, fully deploying OCO to fight “terra” via AFRICOM.

OCO is forever. Happy trails, and have a good kill.

Asia Times News & Features, Empire of Chaos, Pepe Escobar

Japan plans to deploy military unit to island near disputed area with China

 

Japanese government sources said Friday that the country’s Defense Ministry plans to deploy a 500-man Ground Self-Defense Force unit to the Okinawa Prefecture island of Miyako to boost its defense of southwestern Japan regions.

The report by Jiji Press follows the unveiling of new U.S.-Japan defense cooperation guidelines and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s state visit to Washington earlier this week. Miyako Island is part of the Ryukyu Islands chain whose southernmost  “Sakishima” portion includes the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands contested by China and Japan. The new U.S.-Japan military rules stipulate that Washington’s commitment to Japan’s overall security includes the islands.

Jiji says the ministry hopes the funds necessary for the deployment, including land-acquisition costs, will be part of its budget appropriation for the next fiscal year, which starts in April 2016.

Japanese defense planners are also said to be mulling the deployment of another ground unit to the island of Ishigaki, also in Okinawa Prefecture, and plans to carry out on-site surveys there shortly, Jiji quoted the sources as saying. The Senkakus are about 170 km north of Ishigaki Island. Japan considers the tiny group of uninhabited islets to be under the administration of Ishigaki City on Ishigaki.

Minister of Defense Akira Sato expects to visit the two islands in mid-May in order to seek local support for dispatching the unit to Miyako and on-site surveys on Ishigaki, the sources said.

Reuters, quoting U.S. and Japanese sources, reported on April 29 that Japan’s military is considering joint maritime air patrols with the U.S. in the South China Sea in response to China’s increasingly assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the area. Author: Doug Tsuruoka for the Asia Times

British Grandmother on Indonesia’s Death Row Fears Execution Soon

 

This file photo taken on Nov. 28, 2012, shows Lindsay June Sandiford, right, of Britain reacting inside a holding cell after her trial at a court in Denpasar, Bali.

A British grandmother on death row in Indonesia for smuggling drugs has condemned the “senseless, brutal” execution of two Australians, and reportedly fears she could be next in line for the firing squad.

Australian drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were executed by firing squad on Wednesday, along with five other foreigners and one Indonesian, despite a storm of international criticism and pleas from relatives.

Briton Lindsay Sandiford, who was in the same jail as the Australians on the resort island of Bali after being sentenced to death in 2013, said the pair were “reformed men — good men who transformed the lives of people around them”.

“Their senseless, brutal deaths leave the world a poorer place,” she said in a statement given to AFP on Thursday via her lawyer Craig Tuck.

The BBC quoted the lawyer as saying that Sandiford fears she could be next in line to be executed, as Indonesian President Joko Widodo mounts a campaign against what he says is a national emergency caused by rising drugs use.

Sandiford — who was caught trying to smuggle a huge stash of cocaine into Bali — referred to Chan as “my dear friend”.

“He counselled and helped me through exceptionally difficult times after I was sentenced to death in 2013.”

She added the Australians, ringleaders of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug-smuggling gang, used their time in Bali’s Kerobokan jail “to make life better for everyone around them”.

“They introduced the concept of rehabilitation to a prison that never had it before. They organized painting classes, cookery classes and computer classes, and gave practical help to make sure the poorest prisoners had food, clothing and essentials.”

The pair ensured that sick inmates had access to health care and hospital services which were not covered by the prison budget, she said.

Sandiford claims she was coerced into trafficking, and her family recently launched a fundraising drive to raise the money needed to lodge an appeal at the Indonesian Supreme Court, after the British government refused to fund her legal fight.

New Zealand lawyer Tuck, who is leading an international pro bono legal team representing Sandiford, says the money is needed to retain Indonesian lawyers who can fight her case.

If this challenge fails, Sandiford still has the opportunity to appeal for clemency from Joko.

The convicts executed Wednesday recently had their mercy pleas rejected by the president, and Jakarta has repeatedly insisted his decision is final.

Agence France-Presse

 

Death penalty: Little deterrent effect

When Andrew Hammel called European politicians and scholars who contributed to the abolition of the death penalty in Europe “civilized rebels”, it was not without consideration. The elites in the UK, Germany and France, among other nations, decided to completely abolish capital punishment despite the huge support among the public for retaining the death penalty. Thousands of kilometers away, in 1993, according to scholar David T. Johnson, Hong Kong joined the bandwagon despite the fact that two thirds of the public supported the harshest punishment. These countries are often referred to as abolitionists, whereas those that still impose the death penalty are called retentionists.

Indonesia, along with 12 other Asian countries such as China, Singapore and Malaysia, impose the death penalty for extraordinary crimes, including drug offenses. After a five-year moratorium, Indonesia reinstated capital punishment in 2013. As a result, six drug offenders, five of whom were foreign nationals, were executed by a firing squad last January. Another batch of executions was carried out Tuesday for 8 of the 10 death row convicts, including the Australian Bali Nine drug chiefs duo, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

Amid the strained relationship with Australia Indonesian government stands firmly on its argument that executing drug traffickers has a deterrent effect. President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has even reiterated that the country is in a war on drugs, from which 50 people die every day. Despite the tough debate, one question remains: does the death penalty deter drug traffickers?

The answer is, no.

Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia Law School analyzed whether capital punishment had a deterrent effect by comparing the experiences in Singapore and Indonesia.

Notwithstanding Singapore’s much smaller population, the city-state executed almost 15 times as many convicts as Indonesia did from 1999-2005. Fagan argued that if capital punishment had a deterrent effect, there would be less drug trafficking and higher drug prices in Singapore. However, the prices for cocaine and heroin during 2003-2006 were significantly higher in Indonesia than in Singapore, and drugs were generally more prevalent in Singapore at the time.

In Malaysia, regardless of the fact that more than 200 people had been executed since 1975, the International Narcotics Control Board’s report in 2004 suggested that the availability of heroin in Malaysia had increased, due to the rising demand for the drug.

Therefore, as the two studies have shown, executing people is not the answer to deterring drug crimes. Although there is no reliable and accurate survey showing the stance of the Indonesian public in opposing or favoring the death penalty for the Bali Nine duo, political elites seem to be united in supporting retention of the death penalty. Nevertheless, as many countries (or states) have experienced, public opinion should not be the main hurdle to abolishing capital punishment. Then governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine, went against public opinion when he signed a milestone bill on Dec. 18, 2007, to end the death penalty in his state, leaving an important legacy for the American capital punishment landscape.

Corzine’s measure to put life imprisonment without parole in place of capital punishment was made in spite the fact that the decision was opposed by a majority of people by a margin of 53 percent to 39 percent, according to a poll by Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Despite the low public support, Corzine successfully led his state into the ranks of the abolitionists, whereas in general the US remains a retentionist nation.In his article Asia’s Declining Death Penalty, David T. Johnson argues that unlike Europe and Africa, Asia’s most important factor in changing the death penalty law is still national (domestic) prerogatives, not regional or international. Thus, pressing Indonesia to abolish its death penalty, let alone using threats, will likely be of no avail. Rather, intensive dialogue and discussions with Indonesian elites should be one of the solutions to sharing the understanding of the “capital punishment has no deterrence” argument.

Abolishing the death penalty may not be politically popular. Yet, the risk must be taken in order to respect the most basic human right — the right to life. The Indonesian President and political elites have to be brave enough to become “civilized rebels” in order to respect the sanctity of such a right.

The writer is a journalist, who is now studying political communication at the University of Sheffield, UK. - See more at: http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2015/04/28/death-penalty-little-deterrent-effect.html#sthash.ovUxCkXK.dpuf