Corby's sentence too severe

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