Save Bali bombers: Labor

LABOR yesterday attacked John Howard for supporting the death penalty for the Bali bombers as it launched a campaign to stop all executions in Asia.

Four days before the fifth anniversary of the first Bali bombing, which killed 202 people including 88 Australians, Labor pledged its leadership would speak out "consistently" against the death penalty, whether for terrorists or Australian drug smugglers.

Labor has thrown the death penalty in Asia into the election campaign. Its push also comes as the Bali bombers and the Australian "Bali nine" heroin smugglers go through the final stages of their appeals on death sentences.

Labor foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland last night pledged a Labor government would start a regional campaign against state executions in countries such as China, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

Mr McClelland said Labor believed capital punishment justified "fanatical lunatics" to take lives as part of their "warped ideologies". It would object to capital punishment in Asia with "shrewd diplomatic activism".

Capital punishment in Asia, particularly involving Australian nationals on drug charges in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam, has caused major diplomatic rifts and been a point of hot political debate in Australia.

In a prepared speech released last night, Mr McClelland criticised the Prime Minister for supporting "the executions of the perpetrators of the Bali bombings, Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein", while continuing to state that "Australia opposed capital punishment".

Mr McClelland said Labor would be consistent in its public comments on capital punishment.

Once again, something’s wrong with society when activist groups put more effort into saving the lives of mass murderers over preventing the murdering from happening to begin with.

There is no excuse too weak or pathetic for such idiots to find motivation to support the enemy that wants them all dead.

3 posted on 10/08/2007 1:37:58 PM PDT by Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation)

I can’t for the life of me see how coming out in favor of the Bali bombers can help Howard’s opponents.Quite the opposite,in fact,I’d think.But then I know little about Aussie politics.

4 posted on 10/08/2007 1:40:12 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (If martyrdom is so cool,why does Osama Obama go to such great lengths to avoid it?)

Well, the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, has labelled his Foreign Affairs spokesman's comment 'insensitive' and has dumped any plans by Labor to campaign against the execution of the Bali bombers less than 15 hours after the initial announcement - so I guess he decided it was a bad idea politically.

"When it comes to the question of the death penalty, no diplomatic intervention will ever be made by any government that I lead in support of any individual terrorist life."

5 posted on 10/09/2007 2:11:00 AM PDT by naturalman1975 ("America was under attack. Australia was immediately there to help." - John Winston Howard)

It would object to capital punishment in Asia with "shrewd diplomatic activism".

As opposed to "crude political pandering"?

6 posted on 10/09/2007 2:29:12 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (NYT Headline: Protocols of the Learned Elders of CBS: Fake but Accurate, Experts Say)

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