Double Standards in Children-In-Jail Case

Next week two teenage boys will face a foreign court. One boy is an Australian teenager and will face a court in Bali. He has been arrested for drug offences. The other boy is an Indonesian teenager and will face a WA court as a people smuggler because he accepted a job as a deckhand on a boat.

The Australian boy has been held for a month by Indonesian authorties, as Australia negotiates with Indonesian authorities to get him back home. The Indonesian authorities have done all they can to keep the boy out of Bali's notorious Kerobokan Prison.

The Indonesian boy has been held for two years by Australian authorities, as Indonesia does nothing to get him back home. The Australian authorities have dumped the Indonesian boy, named Ali Roni, in WA's maximum security "Hakea" prison.

In the meantime Mr Rudd tells the world that he 'cannot imagine what it must be like for a parent to see their child placed in a foreign prison.' Mr Rudd is right, but he seems to have forgotten that there are 50 boys from Indonesia in Australian prisons whilst we have only one Aussie boy being held in Indonesia.

So why do we treat the two boys so differently?

Well, the truth is that the Indonesian boy is poor; very poor. He is a Muslim and he is brown. The Aussie boy is from 'a nice suburb'; he is white and he is an Australian.

How did it all get to this?

What is wrong with our government and our people that we sit back and let this happen?

Ross B. Taylor

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