SE Asia’s attitude to drugs is complex; the reason some countries are or were harsh is that toleration of drugs was used as a distraction tactic by European colonisers to hold on to their empires well into the mid 20th century; Batavia (Indonesia as NL former colony) had gedoogbeleid long before Amsterdam.
The recreational use of cannabis and opium was legal in Malaya when my parents were younger; it was only criminalised post-independence as the govt feared that they could be “recolonised” by a revolution sparked off by “western youth culture”. And those politicians are still in power today.
It does also look to me a bit like a PR exercise to Australia as both prisoners are Australian but clearly of Asian ancestry (probably from middle class multicultural backgrounds).
But TBH for ID to resume death penalty when every other neighbouring country is trying to stop using it [what usually happens is the dealer gets charged for about 0.1 mg below the death penalty threshold and does a prison sentence with rehab] is unusual and hints that maybe there are genuine social problems caused by the opiates trade that are unnerving the govt enough to act like that – ID is not as economically or socially advanced as MY or SG…
