W

hen I first saw television coverage of the group of young people since called The Bali Nine, I was horrified. As someone who has worked with young people in schools, I was mindful of the terrible toll that illegal drugs take on our society.

Drugs destroy lives and the families of those who are addicted. Parents and siblings are confronted with someone who is so changed by the illegal substance it is as if some alien were residing in his or her skin. It is as though the loved one has been murdered and some other creature has taken over their body.

When I saw the two boys who were claimed to be the ringleaders of the nine, I saw two sullen, angry young men frowning, eyes downcast, pushing violently against their captors, frighteningly unrepentant. I thought they looked like typical drug dealers and put them out of my mind. They had been caught. Justice would be summarily dealt to them.

Then two weeks ago I saw the Australian current affairs program, Four Corners.

It is almost 10 years since Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were first incarcerated in Kerobokan prison and I had coldly put them out of my mind. But what a change your jail has wrought in these young men!

Andrew, I believe, has turned to religion, become a pastor, and is helping other prisoners through the nightmare of their own incarcerations. Myuran has developed an understanding of the spiritual through the arts and become, with the help of our young artist Ben Quilty, an accomplished artist himself.

Myuran amazed me. There is footage in the Four Corners program of him smiling broadly '€” even laughing '€” despite the impending tragedy of his sentence. There is about his face nothing of the closed sullenness and anger of the time of his capture, but a light of compassion, and, dare I say it, a quality of grace, which shows me he is a different man from the one who went into your prison almost a decade ago.

I felt deeply ashamed of my having dismissed the two as typical drug dealers and when I heard his letter that was read to the crowd at a vigil in Sydney, I was moved to tears. Myuran and Andrew have done what so many of us cannot do: admitted they made grievous mistakes. They have promised that they are no longer those men capable of the criminal acts for which they have been imprisoned.

I do not believe that death is a just sentence. Something in your prison system has wrought good men from damaged goods capable of horrible deeds.

Perhaps it is the connection with other Indonesian prisoners that did it. All I know is that a transformation has taken place, something that does not often happen under such circumstances. It would be a wonderful thing to see these young men continue to grow as even better human beings.

If there is a lesson in the story of Andrew and Myuran, it is that their plight has forced us all to re-examine our own humanity. They have made us question ideas that were convenient but did not actually withstand the glare of scrutiny. Andrew and Myuran'€™s predicament has made us all a little more human.

Please allow them to continue growing as good '€” maybe one day even great '€” human beings.

Cheryl Jorgensen

Brisbane