By Cindy Wockner -
Journalist Cindy Wockner recounts the final hours of Australian drug traffickers Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan and explains why she is campaigning for the death penalty to be outlawed.
Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan got what they did not deserve. They did not deserve to be tied up to wooden crosses and shot dead in the early hours of the morning in April 2015. Nor did the six others who were with them in the darkness.
Their parents did not deserve the torture they were forced to endure for months and weeks beforehand and the torment of knowing they had just 72 hours left. They did not deserve that final painful farewell, walking away knowing they would never see their sons again.
The jail guards and officials who respected and liked Myuran and Andrew did not deserve, through duty, to be forced to police those final hours. The 96 men of the firing squads did not deserve their job of sighting the beating hearts, using red laser beams, and then silencing those hearts.
I did not know the six people who were executed with Myuran and Andrew that night but I had met some of their relatives and heard some of their stories. I know they all had families that loved them.
