The fourth most populous nation, the globe's
largest Muslim country, sitting above the planet's greatest pack of
over-privileged hypocrites constantly telling them how to run their overflowing
democracy.
Imagine we had 250
million people living here on a quarter of the landmass? And 23 million
beer-swilling, bacon-chomping fatsos with nothing better to do than sleepwalk
through Bunnings looking down their noses at you?
Is the death penalty
barbaric? Of course, but why does that only become evident when it involves
Aussies? As Human Rights Watch's deputy director in Asia, Phil Robertson, told
the ABC "the fact Australia wakes up and starts making noise when
Australians are on death row is noticed around the region".
You bet it is. As is
our double standard on spying, global warming, live cattle exports, religious
tolerance and foreign aid. I'm surprised we haven't told Asia to cut rice
consumption so we can get cheaper rice milk on our friggin' organic bircher.
"Oi! Giss a hand
catching them people smugglers and terrorists," we say, then when those
shifty Indos want help collaring heroin traffickers and punish them in exactly
the same way they have since 1973, we lose our shit.
The Project won't be doing grave pieces to camera nor
newspapers writing editorials in two weeks' time about the moral bankruptcy of
Thailand executing people. Or Malaysia, Singapore, India and Japan, let alone
the USA and China (all of whom have the death penalty).
"When everybody
else is in trouble you don't say anything, but when Australian citizens are on
death row, then all of a sudden you're vocal? It's frankly not a principled
narrative," said Robertson.
Moral superiority
feels so good. Pity our robust Kantian concern for the rights of the individual
dissolves into utilitarian pragmatism when jailing refugees and their children.
Life is cheap,
but we know that. Otherwise we'd not be so comfortable flouting international
law on the treatment of asylum seekers. So let's rephrase: Others' lives are
cheap, not ours. That's our dirty Aussie secret and it makes us all the more
pathetic grasping for moral authority on the world stage.
At least we've
finally accepted Aussies with names like Chan and Sukumaran are our kin as much
as Barlows, Chambers or Corby. Start treating those without an Aussie passport
the same way, maybe the world might start listening to us. Sam de Brito Sydney
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