Media attention on Corby trial fuels crusade

Schapelle Corby

BALI - A minor spat at the window of the Denpasar courthouse on Friday was a cameo of the dark circus that was the trial of Schapelle Corby, the 27-year-old convicted drug smuggler who has become a martyr for Australian outrage and a potential thorn in the tender relations between Canberra and Jakarta.

An Indonesian journalist trying to pass information through a window to a colleague inside the courthouse where Corby was being sentenced jostled an Australian TV cameraman, sparking an argument that ended with the reporter being told to "**** off" and pushed aside.

It made Indonesian prime-time TV. Shot by a camera thrust through a window from the opposite side of the building, the footage showed a drawn and swallowing Corby in the foreground, and behind her the scuffle and the Indonesian vanishing sideways, her handbag carving a brief arc through the air.

Far worse was to come. While a dazed and distraught Corby clung to her mother before being pulled away to begin a 20-year term in Kerobokan jail, dozens of policemen forced a way through the crowd milling in the cobbled courtyard outside, locking arms to form a passageway to the gate and the prison van.

It was crushed almost immediately by a phalanx of reporters and news crews, charging en masse towards Corby, encircling her in a crush that almost brought her progress to a halt.

Indonesia's remarkable tolerance of the media has made Corby into a crusade. The big organisations have signed exclusive deals with family and supporters, and with those of the nine Australians accused of smuggling heroin who have become known as the Bali Nine.

Reporters slipped into Kerobokan jail posing as family. Cameras and recording equipment have been smuggled into cells. Reporters have shouted questions through holding cells, and the windows of the courtroom have become walls of lenses.

Corby's trial has been a real-life drama, filmed and reported at length from every angle, and fuelled by reports of Indonesian corruption and criticism of its European-based inquisitorial judicial system.

It has raised all the old Australian fears of close neighbours, confirmed prejudices and portrayed Corby as a white victim of barbarous laws.

Expressing the worst of the popular view, one outraged comment on a news.com.au feedback page urged military action to "teach these uncivilised people a lesson".

Threats have been made against Indonesian diplomats and the embassy in Canberra, which was picketed on Friday after Corby's sentence was announced.

Travel agents have pledged to turn clients away from Bali. Travellers have vowed never again to visit Indonesia.

There is a sense that Bali has betrayed Australia, which gave with an overwhelmingly open heart after the Boxing Day tsunami.

Encapsulating this view, Maria wrote on news.com.au: "All Australians have given everything to the Indonesians and this is what we get in return. Thanks, Indonesia."

The bulk of Australians simply do not believe Corby is guilty and think the judges should have accepted her statement that she had no idea where the bag of cannabis in her boogie board bag had come from.

But Corby's problem all along, as a raft of legal experts in Australia have pointed out, is that she had the drugs with no explanation of how they got there, circumstances that would almost certainly convict her in an Australian court.

It is a problem that will follow her into the appeal her lawyers will lodge within the next few days.

Professor Tim Lindsay, of Melbourne University's Asian Law Centre, told ABC radio new evidence would be required for the appeal, and this would not be easy to come by.

"The problem that Corby's team always had is that their argument is: 'I didn't do it. Somebody else did it.' That's a difficult one to prove."

The Australian Government will do everything it can to help out.

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock has offered Corby's lawyers the skills of two Queen's Counsel, experts in Indonesian law, at no charge. Canberra has already helped out financially.

The Government is even pressing if necessary for a special, one-off prisoner transfer scheme to bring Corby back to Australia.

Such is the political heat that as soon as possible after the court announced its decision in Denpasar, Prime Minister John Howard called a hurried press conference in Melbourne to comment on the outcome.

He rejected any suggestion that he disagreed with the verdict, but he noted: "I must say at the outset that, guilty or innocent, I feel for this young woman. If she is guilty I feel for her that a tragic mistake, a tragic act, has done so much damage to her young life. If she is innocent, of course my feeling for her is redoubled."