Barry Jones: The deep bilateral hypocrisy on the death penalty

Individual circumstances, including evidence of remorse and rehabilitation over the past decade, don’t matter in the cases of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran. EPA/Made Nagi

The looming executions of Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran in Indonesia cannot be examined in isolation. They illustrate how the death penalty is always highly politicised; that rhetoric appeals to patriotic feeling; that hostility to the advice or requests of outsiders is deeply resented and counter-productive.