WORLD: Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran executed by Indonesian firing squad

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Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have been executed by firing squad on the Indonesian prison island of Nusakambangan in the early hours of this morning.

They were killed along with six other death row prisoners on Nusakambangan prison island just before 3:30am AEST.

Mulya Lubis, a member of the pair’s legal team, tweeting: “I failed. I lost. I am sorry”.

Another prisoner who was due to be executed this morning, Philippine woman Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso, was spared, according to a text message from the Indonesian attorney-general’s office.

Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 34, members of the so-called Bali Nine, were sentenced to death in 2006 after being found guilty of attempting to smuggle more than eight kilograms of heroin into Australia.

They were refused clemency by Indonesian president Joko Widodo as part of a hardline stance on the death penalty for convicted drug criminals.

They were shot dead despite an emotional final plea for clemency from the Chan and Sukumaran families only hours before the execution.

There was also a last-ditch plea for mercy from the governments of Australia, France and the European Union, who jointly petitioned Indonesia to declare a moratorium on capital punishment.

“We fully respect the sovereignty of Indonesia. But we are against the death penalty in our country and abroad. The execution will not give deterrent effect to drug trafficking or stop the other from becoming victims will abuse drugs. To execute these prisoners now will not achieve anything,” they said in a statement.

Read more here

• Radio National’s Law Report: Are we all criminals … ? (Judge not, that you be not judged …)

Hundreds of Americans have anonymously confessed to a range of crimes as part of Emily Baxter’s project We Are All Criminals.

Baxter is exploring the idea of what it means to be a criminal, and what it means to live with the consequences.

In the USA, one in four people has a criminal record which means they can be banned from jobs, from housing, from voting, and even from owning a dog.

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• Chris B in Comments: http://www.ellistabletalk.com says in part … “A further thought. This may be a big hinge moment in our politics, in our self-image. We have heard a call for mercy, mercy please, by a government that locks up children for ninety years on Nauru, and fails to investigate a clubbing to death on Manus of an Iranian architect who did nobody harm, and lets a young man starve himself to death, another young man burn himself to death, for want of a visa, a passport, a certificate of permission to work in this country. Mercy please for two drug dealers but not these people; they do not deserve our mercy, any of them. Is this hypocrisy, this cruelty, this brazen breach of the Christian ethic, and the Anzac spirit, an acceptable way of doing things any more? I doubt it, I doubt it. Did he do enough? Of course he didn’t. The man who didn’t take the phone calls of the Lindt Cafe hostages (‘The Prime Minister is too busy at this time’), the man who when cancelling his own wedding had his mother make the dread phone call to his weeping, pregnant bride, is not in the end all that brave an Aussie bloke, when it comes down to it, not all that courageous and valiant an Anzac. He is what some Australians call ‘piss weak’.”

• Kim Booth: Statement in Response to Execution of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran

• Christine Milne: Greens call for new safeguards to protect against the death penalty

• New Matilda: Blood On Their Hands: The Secret Government Treaties That Helped Kill Chan And Sukumaran Early this morning, two healthy and well-loved young Australian men – Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran – were taken out into a clearing in an Indonesian forest and shot in the heart, executed by the Republic of Indonesia for their role in an ill-fated 2005 heroin trafficking operation. New Matilda had intended to publish this story in March, but we decided to withhold it after Indonesian president Joko Widodo sought to justify the executions by pointing to a poll conducted by ABC’s Triple J radio station which claimed 52 per cent support among Australians. Chris Graham reports: If you believe the rhetoric, then Prime Minister Tony Abbott understands the widespread anger at the execution this morning of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two of the ‘Bali 9’ caught trying to smuggle 8.3kg of heroin out of Denpasar Airport in April 2005. “I would say to people yes, you are absolutely entitled to be angry, but we’ve got to be very careful to ensure that we do not allow our anger to make a bad situation worse,” Abbott told reporters. But don’t believe it. It is just rhetoric. It’s the sort of thing politicians say when they want you to focus on their words, and not their actions.