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Indonesia executions: prisoners sang Amazing Grace in last moments


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Pastor describes how the offenders, who refused to wear blindfolds, were ‘excited to meet their God’ as they waited to be executed for drug crimes

 

 

Kate Lamb in Jakarta

 

Wednesday 29 April 2015 14.12 BST

 

 

 

Strung to a pole and staring down at the weapons pointed over their hearts, prisoners defiantly sang Amazing Grace in the moments before they were executed on Indonesia’s Nusa Kambangan prison island on Wednesday.

 

After months of desperate legal and diplomatic appeals, Indonesia executed eight convicted drug traffickers – citizens of Australia, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil and Indonesia – in the early hours of the morning.

 

Pastor Karina de Vega described to the Sydney Morning Herald the extraordinary scenes of the prisoners “praising their God”. “It was breathtaking,” said De Vega, “This was the first time I witnessed someone so excited to meet their God.”

 

They reportedly refused to wear blindfolds so they could look their executioners in the eye, and as they sang in unison the bond between them was visceral, said the pastor.

 

“They bonded together,” she said. “Brotherhood. They sang one song after another. Praising God. They sang a few songs together, like in a choir.”

 

After singing Amazing Grace they moved on to Lord O My Soul. The order to shoot was issued before they finished.

 

In their last days in the isolation cells, Australian prisoner Myuran Sukumaran painted a series of haunting self-portraits – the final painting depicted a human heart.

 

Together with Andrew Chan, who was ordained as a Christian priest during his almost-decade in jail, the two members of the Bali Nine heroin-smuggling ring told their families they would hold strong until the end.

 

According to the husband of pastor Christie Buckingham, who provided spiritual counsel to the two men before they faced the firing squad, the prisoners were deeply dignified in their final moments.

 

“She told me the eight of them walked out onto the killing field singing songs of praise,” Rob Buckingham told 3AW radio in Australia.

 

From the port at Cilacap, the closest point to cross over to the maximum-security prison on the island, prayers were offered by candlelight as the gunshots rang out just after midnight. Some family members, after years of begging for mercy and receiving none, broke down and wailed.

 

Only one family had reason to be grateful. After the Indonesian president postponed the scheduled execution of Filipina migrant worker Mary Jane Veloso just hours earlier, the family offered prayers for their miracle.

 

Veloso’s scheduled execution was postponed after a woman believed to have recruited her turned herself into the Manila police. Veloso has consistently insisted she was duped into carrying 2.6kg of heroin into Indonesia.

 

 

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Photographs of convicts Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two members of the Bali Nine, are displayed at the hospital morgue in Jakarta. Photograph: Bay Ismoyo/AFP/Getty Images

 

 

 

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Top row from left: Australians Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan, Nigerian Okwuduli Oyatanze and Nigerian Martin Anderson. Bottom row from left: Nigerians Raheem Agbaje Salami, Silvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, and Frenchman Serge Atlaoui, who has been given a temporary reprieve. Photograph: Composite Photograph: Composite/Getty

 

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/29/indonesia-executions-prisoners-bali-nine-sang-amazing-grace-last-moments

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