MELBOURNE, Australia
Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop is set to meet with Indonesia’s ambassador after lodging a complaint Friday over the treatment of two Australian drug smugglers transferred to an island prison where they are due to be executed.
The official complaint came after photos in Indonesian media showed a police chief grinning and talking with Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran with his arm resting on the inmates’ shoulders on board a flight to Central Java.
The Age reported that the deputy secretary of Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Greg Moriaty, had phoned Ambassador Nadjib Riphat Kesoema, who is said to be in Perth but is expected to receive the complaint Friday.
Upon Kesoema’s return to Canberra, Bishop plans to personally protest the "degrading treatment" of Chan and Sukumaran and the "disproportionate use of force" in their transfer to Nusa Kambangan island.
Senior commissioner Djoko Hari Utomo told Fairfax Media that he had not realized that photographs of him with the Bali nine ringleaders were being taken.
"It was not a selfie moment," Utomo said, adding that he had been trying to raise their spirits.
He also expressed to the Kompas news website his surprise at the coverage of the photo, explaining that he was checking on the inmates’ status while fulfilling his duty.
"As a human being I was concerned. I could not have chuckled at the pain of others, "he said.
The Australians were transferred to Nusa Kambangan under the watch of heavily armed and helmeted security personnel Wednesday. They were ferried out of Bali’s Kerobokan prison in two armored vehicles before being put on a civil airline flight and a boat in a process shadowed by helicopters.
"I cannot comprehend the manner or the method of their transfer to the so-called execution island," Bishop told the ABC’s AM program.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has also criticized the photographs by saying, "I thought they were unbecoming and I thought that they showed a lack of respect and a lack of dignity and obviously we've already protested to the Indonesian ambassador here in Canberra."
He is still awaiting a response from his Indonesia counterpart, Joko Widodo, for his latest request for a phone call.
With a date for the executions by firing squad yet to be announced, Abbott has called on the Indonesian government to "pull back from this brink."
"As a government, as a parliament that wants nothing but good for Indonesia, we are speaking as one united voice publicly and privately in every way we can -- pull back from this brink," he told the parliament Thursday. "Don't just realise what is in your own best interests, but realise what is in your own best values."
On Thursday, Indonesia rejected an Australian offer to exchange prisoners in a bid to save the Bali 9 duo, with its Foreign Ministry saying the country had no legal framework in place to act on the proposal made by Bishop earlier this week.
Chan and Sukumaran are among 10 drug convicts, nine of them foreigners, facing execution by firing squad within days.
The two men were convicted of leading a trafficking gang dubbed the Bali Nine that attempted to smuggle 8.3 kilograms (18 pounds) of heroin through Indonesia in 2005.
Their case has soured relations between Australia and Indonesia, with Australia’s repeated high-level attempts to have the men’s death sentences commuted rejected.
Widodo has adopted a tough stance on drug traffickers, denying clemency while Indonesia faces a "drug emergency." The death penalty was resumed in 2013 after a five-year gap but the first executions only occurred earlier this year when six drug offenders, including five foreigners, were executed.
