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Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?

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As three men challenge their commutations, others brace for imminent prison transfers and the finality of a life sentence with no chance of release. In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”

Bali Nine member Myuran Sukumaran paintings in Melbourne

Self portrait by Myuran Sukumaran
FROM death row in Bali’s Kerobokan jail Myuran Sukumaran has painted portraits of the men who currently hold the young Australian’s fate in their hands.

A portrait of outgoing Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY), along with one of his successor Joko Widodo, are among the paintings done inside the jail by Sukumaran, who is on death row in jail for his involvement in the Bali Nine heroin smuggling gang.

And they are among 21 of Myuran Sukumaran’s paintings which go on display tonight (Saturday) in a Melbourne art gallery as part of a special exhibition called “Paintings from Kerobokan Prison”.

Sukumaran’s art workshop and gallery at the jail have been applauded by a succession of jail governors and Indonesian authorities for its rehabilitation programs and for giving prisoners a purpose and skills for when they are released.

Their Australian lawyer Julian McMahon said that Sukumaran had used his art to look into himself and to teach and help other prisoners and give them hope for their lives.

“In visiting so many prisons over the years virtually nothing has moved me so much as sitting in the corner of the art workshop and watching a workshop where so many of the prisoners bear scars of a life of real hardship and poverty and watching them concentrate, learn, work and be so proud of their art,” Mr McMahon said.

“We know the realities of prisons. We have seen all kinds of media about Kerobokan prison. The work in the rehabilitation programs is real and it is fantastic,” he said.

Paintings at the exhibition will sell for $500 each and all proceeds will go back to the art program at Kerobokan Jail, to buy supplies and keep the program running.

Click here to read the full article (+ video)

Source: news.com.au, Sept. 6, 2014

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