Youth, Greed Led Drug Smugglers to Bali Death Row

By Michael Perry

SYDNEY — Young Australians have been making the pilgrimage to the Indonesian resort island of Bali for decades, lured by the cheap cost of living, tropical sun and beaches and exotic Asian culture.

Cheap drugs, especially marijuana, have been another lure since the Bali hippie/surfer trail first opened in the 1970s. Early Australian surf movies featured naked hippies on Kuta Beach smoking marijuana as a reflection of Bali’s free spirit.

Today, two Australians sit in a Bali jail sentenced to death by firing squad for trying to smuggle 8.2 kg (18 lbs) of heroin from Bali to Australia in 2005.

Another seven have been sentenced to life in a Bali jail.

They are not hardened criminals. Most are only a few years out of high school — eight are in their 20s and one is 19 — from middle class Australia.

With large signs at Bali’s airport warning visitors that drug trafficking carries the death penalty, why did the "Bali Nine" as they are called in Australia get involved in drug smuggling?

The Australian National Council on Drugs said many young Australians now see Bali as an extension of Australia, just another place to party, drink beer, have sex and take drugs.

The Council’s executive officer Gino Vumbaca believes a dangerous cocktail of ignorance, naivete, greed and a feeling of youthful invincibility led the "Bali Nine" to their fate.

"Unfortunately for most young people, they see themselves as invincible … so they take risks that most adults wouldn’t," Vumbaca said on Wednesday.

"They are on holidays. They are young. They are partying. People see an opportunity to make money by selling drugs — people don’t equate that with the severe penalties."

Andrew Chan, 22, and Myuran Sukumaran, 24, are the two ringleaders and have been sentenced to death.

Chan was accused by Indonesian police of being the "Godfather" who planned and financed the operation. He had no drugs on him when arrested awaiting for takeoff from Denpasar.

Sukumaran, a stocky martial arts expert, was Chan’s enforcer.

The Australian drug council says the idea of easy money and the status of wealth is a major attraction of the drug world.

"Even though it is an illicit business, the drug world has been glamorized by movies and TV, despite its ruthlessness and cut-throat behavior," said Vumbaca.

HEROIN MULES

Four of the Australians were "mules" hired to tape the heroin to their bodies — in return for a few thousand dollars and a free trip to an Asian island paradise.

The young drug "mules" said that when they discovered the real reason for their trip to Bali and refused to carry the heroin, Chan threatened them with death and threatened their families. But the Bali judges rejected their threat claim.

Internationally, drug "mules" are usually recruited from poor developing nations and see drugs as a way out of poverty, said the Australian drug council. In Australia and other Western countries drug money is also an easy solution to financial woes.

"When you are 18 or 19 and working part-time and have a job as shelf-stacker, you haven’t got a lot of money. You want to buy a car and go traveling and this is quick money," said Vumbaca.

"Then there is the naivete of young people who think A$5,000 or A$10,000 dollars is a lot of money up against the risk they are taking, a death penalty or life in prison in a foreign jail."

Drug mules Scott Rush, 20, and his school friend Michael Czugaj, 20, have been sentenced to life in jail. Both said they did not know they were traveling to Bali to smuggle heroin.

"In all honesty, I should not have been so blind to this, this so-called holiday," Czugaj told the court.

Rush had a history of drugs, according to Australian media reports. He committed 16 crimes in two years, including drug possession, fraud and theft, said local media.

The Courier-Mail newspaper in his hometown of Brisbane in northern Australia said Rush had been using marijuana since he was 15 and had also used heroin and ecstasy. A prison report said his preferred drug was amphetamines, the newspaper said.

The only woman among the "Bali Nine" is Renae Lawrence — a 28-year-old from Australia’s industrial city of Newcastle, north of Sydney.

She worked with Chan in a Sydney catering firm and was facing car-theft charges in Australia, according to Australian media.

Lawrence was the first to realize the gravity of her actions when strip-searched at Bali’s airport. She told police everything, hoping for leniency, but the judges ignored a prosecution request for 20 years jail and jailed her for life.

The youngest, Matthew Norman, 19, and Si Yi Chen, 20, were arrested in a Bali hotel, where police found a small quantity of heroin and suitcases. Sentenced to life on Wednesday, both said they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.