Sydney To Hold Concert Against Bali Nine Execution
There will be a concert in Sydney in support of the campaign to save Bali Nine drug convicts, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, from death penalty. The Australian offenders’ fate is still undecided.
The Sydney concert will feature members of Midnight Oil and Noiseworks as well as singers Jenny Morris, Josh Pyke and Megan Washington. Sukumaran’s friend Ben Quilty, who is an artist himself, is organising the concert's line-up. According to Morris, the concert is “about compassion.” She says that Quilty has been asking musicians to perform at the concert. Whoever he has approached so far, according to Morris, has said yes to his proposal. She also says that she is sorry for Chan and Sukumaran who are going to “have their young lives snuffed out because of a stupid mistake they made."
Major Australian artists like actors Richard Roxburgh and Geoffrey Rush, singers Missy Higgins and Megan Washington, broadcaster Alan Jones and writer Germaine Greer earlier featured in a “Mercy Campaign” video which had been released just before the announcement of the concert was made. According to “Mercy Campaign” founder Brigid Delaney, the movement is bringing people together irrespective of their political differences. "I was so excited when I saw the video and that Alan Jones was speaking out for Mercy," ABC News quotes Delaney "I disagree with him on a lot of things but this one, I think, [is] fantastic. Let's bring a whole lot of people [together], regardless of their politics, left or right." She also says that people should not wait until it is “too late to raise your voice to speak out against the death penalty.”
In the meantime, the Indonesian Attorney-General's office is in the process of evaluating the execution of six drug felons which were carried out on Jan. 18. the Attorney-General’s spokesman Tony Spontana said that the evaluation was expected to be over by the end of January. After the execution is over, the second phase of execution is going to take place, he said. The second phase will have the Attorney General announce the time and the place of the execution. He will also declare the names of the people on the list of the execution. The online petition in Australia against the execution has gathered 65,000 signatures so far.