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