Your comments on the heating up of Indonesia'€™s diplomatic relations with Brazil and Australia due to the execution of a Brazilian drug trafficker and the plan to execute two Australian convicts involved in a similar crime:

Indonesia is a free and sovereign country. So don'€™t let any country dictate to us what to do. Don'€™t we have a diplomatic code of ethics? I think the reactions of the heads of states to this matter are not the ones shared by their people. Alas, they were caught in the action and got the consequences.

Eddy Arjuna Ziny

Those two criminals on death row must be having the time of their lives to hear that two nations are fighting it out for them. Otherwise, nobody would give any attention to them.

Taco Macaco de Vries

Finally, light is being shed on the question of the actions and results of the death penalty in this country.

Andrea

Indonesia has the right to execute drug traffickers who have been legally sentenced to death by the Supreme Court.

The Indonesian President and the people have reacted correctly against the insult from the Brazilian President, who abruptly canceled the presenting of credentials by the accredited Indonesian ambassador, whereas the Australian Prime Minister mentioned a trade-off of Australia'€™s tsunami donations to the people of Aceh for clemency for the sentenced drug traffickers.

The Indonesian ambassador has been called home and the people are collecting coins to repay the Australian donations.

Soebagjo Soetadji
Jakarta

Over the years, I have worked closely with senior figures from the Indonesian Foreign Ministry. These extraordinary people are well trained in the diplomatic arts of tact, sensitivity, discretion, subtlety, finesse, delicacy and '€” most importantly '€” in representing their country'€™s '€œbest interests'€.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the threatening overtures coming from some sections of the Australian political establishment over the Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran death-row cases.

What is called for now is space '€” not backing down, or a reversal, but time to let the political temperature cool down ['€¦] and then calmly '€” and diplomatically '€” consider a range of possible (and perhaps as yet unforeseen) options that may ultimately be in Indonesia'€™s best long-term interests.

Rob Goodfellow
Australia

Once the executions are over, Australian diplomatic relations with Indonesia are likely to cool rather than warm up. In the 1960s Indonesia had a positive image in Australia and many people studied Indonesian. I did Indonesian as part of an arts degree and my daughters all studied Indonesian at school.

Over time, however, Indonesia'€™s image became more and more negative due to incidents, such as the murder of Australian journalists in East Timor. Gradually, interest in Indonesia has declined and this has impacted language studies. With few young people interested in learning Indonesian, it has almost disappeared as a discipline.

Australian diplomacy is influenced by the electorate. That electorate has all but lost interest in Indonesia, largely due to hearing continual bad news about Indonesia. A fatigue has set in where people are just not interested in hearing any more, hence less and less news is reported on, including that of a positive nature.

If President Jokowi is hoping for a reaction from Australia then he is going to be disappointed. His advisers will have to find some obscure words in a parliamentary speech to make a fuss over. All he will get is disinterest, possibly the worst fate of all.

Jagera

One aspect of this situation that really appalls me is the crass comments made by the Australian prime minister in raising the assistance Australia gave Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami in his clumsy attempts to prevent the execution of Chan and Sukumaran.

Like many Australians I expected that the aid that came from both the Australian government and ordinary Australians was given freely to other human beings in a time of great crisis and without any strings attached.

One of the great benefits was that it strengthened a long friendship that in the past included the gift of gamelan following support during Indonesia'€™s independence struggle. To see that an Australian prime minister is prepared to jeopardize this friendship through veiled threats or reminders to a sovereign nation is embarrassing.

And while I generally oppose the death penalty it is very hard to have very much sympathy for Chan and Sukumaran. Like Australians, people in Indonesia suffer the effects of drug addiction daily.

Indonesia has tried to solve this problem by applying the death penalty in serious cases of drug smuggling. I find it hard to have much sympathy for Chan and Sukumaran. They knew the penalties; it is hard to miss the signs at Denpasar airport. They were not simply mules and were prepared to let seven other young Australians take the risk of execution.

My Dee

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