"Indonesia's state sovereignty and their right to implement law?":
That ended in 1950 when Sukarno crushed the United States of Indonesia and unilaterally declared that the other 15 States had decided to abolish themselves without a vote and had decided without a vote to become part of his Republic. It is shameful that Australia and the rest of the UN stood by and did nothing to refute the dictator's claims let alone help the people who were now effectively slaves.

As for the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Indonesia didn't 'ratifiy' it until 2006 so I doubt they are too serious about it. Don't forget that Saudi Arabia declared it was in violation of Sharia law and that Indonesia has imposed Sharia law on Aceh as a substitute for independence.

You seem to endorse the claim of sovereignty that Indonesia makes, you seem to be willing to accept that Indonesia has a right to kill between 100,000 to half a million people in West Papua, why?

West Papua was a Dutch colony until Australia and the General Assembly agreed to occupy and take over responsibility for it as a UN trust territory in September 1962; we then accepted the offer by Indonesia to administrate our trust territory and under our wise trusteeship hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, their Councils and other civil organisations disbanded and declared illegal, Australia deported its medical stidents to Indonesia three weeks after we allowed Indonesia to assume the administration.

What about our responsibility to those million Melanesian people? How are we fulfilling our obligations under article 76 of the UN Charter? Canberra decided to supported General Assembly res.1752 for the occupation of the colony which is a 'entitlement' we gave ourselves under article 85 part 1 of the UN Charter but we are meant to only do that in order to protect people's human rights under article 76 etc.

Why are you able to see that killing Myuran and Andrew is wrong, but are able to accept the Indonesian killing and repression of our neighbours?

It is the media and TV that continue day after day to write articles about people they think we are interested in, whether it be criminals or certain babies, they are wrong, the majority of people are not at all interested in either the predicaments of criminals or a one off birth, because of wealth, we want to hear real stories of the poverty in the world, climate change, articles of a left viewpoint as well as the right etc, which we never hear.
The writer obviously does not consider the unnecessary deaths through war, these people do not have the chance to live as they wish to live but bombed out of existence, the two mentioned knew the law of Indonesia, that should have been the end of the story, you get yourself into being shot, accept it, we can all turn ourselves into looking good if our days on earth may be numbered.

"We connected with Myuran and Andrew. We saw their stories on the news every night."

Please don't include me in your "we", I had better things to concern myself with than a couple of miscreants who should have known what the consequences of their misdeeds would be.

David

I don't know my friend ? However what does concern me, why does an individual spend all that time and money on finishing medicine and go on to create some 'trendy' hamburger store ? I would've thought his University place in Med-School, would be more productive by giving it to someone who wishes to practice, not become some popular restaurateur ? Your extravagance and prodigality is breathtaking !

Thank you for this well written post Amit! I couldn't agree more with the idea that we can do so much more in this world, for so many people, if we show more empathy :)

MinP

"Thank you for this well written post Amit! I couldn't agree more with the idea that we can do so much more in this world, for so many people, if we show more empathy :)"

We can continue to make sure that drug dealers get their just deserts.
Indonesia has the right slant on this.