Boycott Bali campaign

Boycott Bali campaign

It has been reported in the media that when Schapelle Corby,
who was sentenced to 20 years in jail by the Denpasar District
Court, celebrates her 28th birthday this July 10, her Australian
sympathizers will stage a rally to demand her release and
campaign for tourists to boycott Bali.

Tokoh, a tabloid published in Denpasar, has quoted a report by
The Age and The Herald Sun, both Australian newspapers, about
Corby's identity, which is quite different from what we have
learned about her in Indonesia.

Indonesian readers have gotten the impression that Corby is an
innocent student at a beauty school. With her sweet appearance
she wants to impress upon people that she is not guilty and the
marijuana found in her bag was actually put there by a baggage
handler at the Sydney airport.

It is doubtful that this story is true because when she lugged
her bag to the customs counter in Denpasar, surely she would have
realized that it was 4.2 kilograms heavier than before. And the
bag would have been bulging with all of that marijuana.

According to Tokoh, Corby once worked at a supermarket in
the Gold Coast, Queensland, as a cashier. It was here that she
became acquainted with Miki Tanaka, a Japanese national. When
Tanaka returned to Japan, she followed him. They were married in
Japan in June 1998 and lived in Omaszaki. One of their neighbors,
Yoshi Matsuo, said the newly married couple often had rows about
money.

Only three months after her marriage, Corby ran away to Tokyo
and then returned to Australia. She divorced Tanaka in 2003 and
has not remarried.

I suspect that an Australian drug syndicate asked her to take
a package to Bali and she might not have known what it contained.
Unfortunately, a rival drug syndicate knew that she was carrying
marijuana to Bali. To foil the smuggling attempt, it is likely
that this rival syndicate tipped security in Bali about Corby and
the marijuana she was carrying.

Corby's defense lawyers argued that it was no use smuggling
marijuana to Bali, because Indonesian-grown marijuana could be
purchased on the island much cheaper.

The answer to this argument is simple. When a visitor buys
marijuana in Bali, he runs the risk of buying it from a
plainclothes policeman. So, it will be safer for Australians, for
example, to buy marijuana from fellow Australians, although the
price may be higher.

SUNARTO PRAWIROSUJANTO, Jakarta