Corby's sentence too severe

Surely, your chief editor (The Jakarta Post, May 30) is not suggesting that the lengthy prison sentence imposed on Schapelle Corby was determined, in part, by widespread Australian discontent about the fairness of her trial. Would you expect us to meekly bow our heads when innocence is sacrificed to demonstrate a political point?

Were the situation reversed, Indonesians would have every cause to protest too. We are outraged that key defense evidence was either dismissed or trivialized; that the chief judge has presided over 500 cases of suspected drug cases and not once has he ruled other than guilty; that a volume of "similar events" has occurred in which illegal goods have been surreptitiously placed in the baggage of innocent travellers between our countries; that corrupt Australian baggage-handlers were engaged in this same practice on the very day and at the same airport that Schapelle departed for Indonesia; that it is nonsensical for a person to travel from a country where the purchase-cost of drugs is very high and the penalty of conviction is too low, to a country where the cost is low and the penalty appropriately severe.

GRAHAM WILLIAMS Victoria, Australia