The Schapelle Corby case continues to draw the public's interest more than five years after her incarceration. Schapelle Corby was convicted of smuggling more than 4kgs of marijuana from Australia to Indonesia. For this, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
There is much debate about whether she is guilty or innocent. Much of this debate focuses on the evidence or lack thereof, and the procedures that were followed at trial. If you are interested in a discussion of this, then you can find one here. Personally, the issues of guilt and innocence at this point in time are secondary to more pressing concerns.
However, what I post here is a short video that can be found on YouTube which deals with this pressing concern.
All the doctors involved with Schapelle Corby agree that she is depressed and that there is a need to treat her for that depression. Nevertheless, the doctors do disagree on the severity of the depression and the manner in which it needs to be treated.
My belief is that prisoners still have human rights and those rights must be respected. If it is agreed that Schapelle Corby is suffering from depression, then there is clearly a right held by her that entitles her to be treated. Treatment must be provided on humanitarian grounds, even if there was some belief in the circles of the powers that be that medical treatment for prisoners was not a foregone conclusion as a right.
I am not sure that the first step is immediate repatriation to Australia. Indonesia has mental health facilities that would be more than capable of providing the initial treatment and medication. In the event, that a local intervention fails then a more serious discussion is warranted on whether the best option available is to repatriate Schapelle Corby to Australia,
Yet, the most pressing concern is to ensure that her depression is treated and managed in order to allow her to continue to live.
3 comments:
Yes this poor girl does need help and our government need to stop handing over our tax dollars to a county that can not even give one of our citizens a fair trial. How is it that our government said they would make sure she recieved a fair trial and yet they allowed no testing of evidence, footage from airports, fingerprints ect to be done despite Corby's demands? To give some one such a harsh sentance the least they could of done was weigh the luggage or finger print the bag.
Anonymous...
Thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. It would be better if you adopted a pseudonym or wrote under your own name (even better).
Despite mentioning the evidence in the post, the real focus of this post is whether a humanitarian appeal for repatriation will work and the competing diagnoses with respect to where any treatment should take place.
The time for rehashing the evidence and playing the blame game are in the past. The reality is the judicial process has been run in Indonesia. What is left is a bid for clemency. The arguments about the evidence I understand and appreciate. However, as I noted, the judicial process has run its course.
I support anyone who is arguing for a release based on humanitarian grounds or on the simple grounds that she has done more than enough time for the crime she was convicted of (even in and under Indonesian circumstances).
Yet, arguments about evidence and casting blame on who is responsible for any "perceived failures" seems a little pointless to me, at least at this juncture in time.
Well, I do not actually imagine it is likely to have success.
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