Transatlantic Zeppelin

« C'est non! | Main | Paris to marry Paris »

May 30, 2005

At least she escaped the firing squad

Whenever one travels overseas, there is a danger, however remote, that he will end up in a strange and unfamiliar jail accused of a very serious crime he did not commit. He will face a corrupt and harsh kangaroo court and be sentenced to an outrageous jail term in a dreadful third-world prison. This is what happened to Australian holiday-maker Schapelle Corby in Indonesia.

If you haven't been following Schapelle's case, here's what likely happened. The 27-year-old Gold Coast beauty school student boarded a plane from Brisbane to Bali and checked-in her surfboard in a bag. A Qantas gateworker or someone in a similar position, part of a drug smuggling ring that is now coming to light, stuffed 9 lbs of pot into her bag before it was loaded on the plane. A confederate with access to the bag in Indonesia would then be alerted to remove the stash before returning the bag on the baggage carousel. But the weed was not removed and Schapelle was caught at customs. After a jury-less trial where her amateur lawyer broke down in tears, Schapelle got 20 years in a notorious hoosegow. But it could have been anyone's bag; Shapelle just got very unlucky.

A lot of things went wrong in Shapelle's ordeal, most notably the jury-less Indonesian court system and the fact that Qantas and the Australian government were apparently unaware of a smuggling ring operating in Brisbane airport. Key evidence also went missing, including x-ray and weight records of Schapelle's bag in Brisbane. Indonesian authorities never took fingerprints from the bag of cannibas, which could then be compared to fingerprints of baggage handlers and Schapelle. And the Australian government apparently offered little help until it was too late. (Austrlian PM John Howard made the wonderfully Kerry-like statement that "we have to accept the justice systems of other countries"--as if an injustice is acceptable because it is perpetrated by other countries.)

Schapelle's case illustrates three key points.

1) Connections matter. Australian media accounts say that Schapelle's family was rather economically disadvantaged and dysfunctional. Had she been a friend of powerful people in Australia and Indonesia, she would have had a much better chance of being let-off or at least being able to pay the right bribe to get out of the country. It's true in the States, too, though I can't write about it in public. With better connections, Schapelle could have engaged competent counsel earlier in the process. I wrote about how Terry Schaivo's fate was sealed very early because the Schindlers did not know what they were up against. Ditto Schapelle. One wonders how the mastermind of the Bali nightclub bombing, which killed 60, got off with 2.5 years while innocent Schapelle got 20 years in the slammer. Political, social, and economic connections matter.

2) Too much tourism is bad. I often rail about places like Budapest and Rome as being "over-touristed." Schapelle's case illustrates one reason I dislike places with too many tourists. Media accounts claim that Indonesians are quite happy with the injustice, as they have seen a generation of young people destroyed by drugs introduced by tourists. It is easy to accept more and more tourists without providing the right social, economic, and judicial infrastructure to accomodate them and battle the negative influence of tourists on a country. Now the economy has become dependent on tourists but is incapable of dealing with their effects on society without harming the very industry the economy depends on. (Australians are organizing mass boycotts of Indonesia.) Indonesia will lose tourist revenue while Australians are upset. Too much tourism has created a lose-lose situation for both sides.

3) Bribery is tricky. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that A$250,000 (~USD 175,000), paid to a prosecutor, is enough to secure an early release in Indonesia. When Peruvian police demanded a bribe to issue a report when I was a victim of a pickpocket, I thought about doing it. But one bribe makes it more and more difficult for the next person, who might not be able to pay-off a cop like an American could. When we were in Russia and paid $200 to buy-off the guards at a tourist site, did we only make a bad system worse? Should we be happy that Schapelle refused to pony up the dough?

I love my friends from Indonesia, but I'll have to get to 100 countries without visiting there. I've been following the case not because Schapelle is an attractive young damsel in distress but because what happened to her could happen to me or any of my friends who travel frequently overseas. Any one of us could be Schapelle. That's why she has kept me up at night.

Posted by adrianjo at May 30, 2005 11:37 AM

Comments

Post a comment