[SBM & BBM]
But is that true?
For example, I’ve just been searching the Sydney Morning Herald. They had several stories about Lindsay Sandiford, starting in May of 2012. They ran a story on the indictment against her read in court on Oct. 5 of that year. Then everything went quiet. Their next story about Sandiford was on Jan. 22, 2013, when they ran a story announcing her death sentence.
Similarly, there are several hits for Lindsay Sandiford when you search the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company) site, but not one hit about her trial except for when she received the death sentence.
I searched the ABC site for Myuran Sukumaran, limiting my search to stories between Oct. 11, 2005 (the first day of his trial) and Feb. 14, 2006 (when he was sentenced to death). I found no stories discussing the evidence at his trial. There were very few stories that appeared at all in this interval and they were concerned mostly with what lawyers were arguing about sentence and one story saying his lawyer argued he should be released because there was no evidence against him. But ABC does not have stories about the witnesses and evidence against him, nothing aboaut the very heart of his trial. ABC went quiet during this period.
There are a huge number of stories at the Sydney Morning Herald about Schapelle Corby. But there is one noteworthy thing: there are no stories which describe any day in court in which evidence was presented.
There are lots of articles which appeared during her trial, but they did not report the trial itself. They were concerned with out-of-court statements about the possible involvement of baggage handlers, musings on what a conviction might do to Bali tourism, discussions of whether Schapelle might serve part of her sentence in Australia, reports that she physically collapsed one day in the courtroom, and the like. But when it came to the witnesses and evidence at the trial, the SMH went quiet.
There was coverage after the evidentiary part of the trial was over. On Apr. 29, 2005, there were reports on her plea to the judges (including three words in Indonesian: "Saya tidak bersalah", I am not guilty.) There is also some reporting of arguments made by her lawyers. There are reports that the prosecutors said on May 7, “send her to jail” and that there was a decision on May 13 that the allegations about Sydney baggage handlers' involvement in the drug trade comes too late.
But I cannot find an article discussing a day at the trial where witnesses were heard or evidence was presented.
The Lindsay Sandiford, Myuran Sukumaran and Schapelle Corby trials all went quiet when the evidence and witnesses were presented. None of them received lenient sentences.
I’ve only spent a couple of hours with this research, so I hardly consider it definitive. But is there any Indonesian trial where there’s coverage of the heart of the case? Coverage of the prosecution’s presentation of the evidence? Newspaper stories discussing the questioning of witnesses? The only one I’ve found so far is the Neil Bantleman trial (Canadian accused of sexually assaulting children at the school where he worked in Jakarta) and the truly strange thing there is that from the few CBC reports I’ve read it seems that the CBC is getting their courtroom info not from their own journalists but from Bantleman’s wife and brother!
For reasons I simply do not understand, it seems that the evidentiary part of Indonesian trials do not get reported. It happens not just when rich defendants buy their way out of justice, it also happens when defendants like Lindsay Sandiford and Myuran Sukumaran are subjected to the death penalty.
When things go quiet in Indonesia, it does not mean a lenient sentence is on the way. It seems that things always go quiet.
