Napalm Death's Mark "Barney" Greenway on Why He's Fighting to Save the Lives of Australian Nationals Sentenced to Death in Indonesia

© Mathieu Drouet - www.mathieu-drouet.com

Mark "Barney" Greenway has a few balls in the air, to say the least. Napalm Death have just released their new LP Apex Predator - Easy Meat via Century Media, their fifteenth overall. He's fielding interviews about that LP like crazy, including ours. Napalm Death is currently on a North American jaunt with the similarly legendary Voivod. But possibly more important than all of that, Greenway is involved in a fight to save the lives of two Australian nationals sentenced to death in Indonesia for drug smuggling. After becoming aware of the situation and the newly elected president’s fandom of his seminal band, Barney Greenway issued a statement that pleaded for the pair’s lives, highlighting the band’s lyrics as part of an open letter.

Currently on tour, we spoke to Barney Greenway about his thoughts Myuran Sukmaran and Andrew Chan, the Napalm Death loving president of Indonesia, and whether capital punishment is ever truly justified.

Noisey: In your own words could tell me the full situation in Indonesia with the grandmother and two Australian nationals.
Mark “Barney” Greenway: In the case of the grandma, it was something i found out when she was arrested more or less. I find out about these kind of things, and I know what the Indonesian penal system is like, so I was like… that’s not looking too good. I guess I kind of followed it in the background, and obviously since I’ve understood the nature of these things, and I’ve been an objector of the death penalty and capital punishment. I knew about the Australian nationals kind of, but I didn’t know a huge amount of the back story.

But of course as of a week or so ago, an Australian newspaper involved with a mercy campaign contacted me to write a letter to the president of Indonesia because apparently he’s a Napalm Death fan, and has been photographed wearing our t-shirt. So that gave me an in, and I wrote the letter. It’s a good thing because it put the issue of capital punishment right there, and has started a debate. So I kind of researched into where they were, and basically they were found to be carrying heroin and so they’ve been sitting in prison for quite some time, but it turns out they’ve made a really positive contribution to the general welfare of the prison and looking after the other prisoners. I just stepped in because this newish Indonesian president is a Napalm Death fan apparently, amongst other bands.

So I basically wrote an open letter which was published in newspapers primarily, on behalf of this campaign, basically saying “look, it’s me the singer of Napalm Death, you apparently like our band. If you have any kind of knowledge of the music, you’d know the lyrics deal with humanity and breaking the cycle of violence, whether it be from the state or individuals or anybody. And obviously that includes the death penalty.” So I wrote my letter, and little did I know it just exploded. It was all of the sudden everywhere, and I didn’t see that coming. The situation is obviously tricky, because Indonesia is not particularly renowned for being flexible with these things.

And that even goes back from stemming in the 90s with the Michael Fay situation in Singapore.
Exactly. So, I mean at this point you kind of have to live in oath about these things. But the other point to bring is that this Indonesian president was elected on a platform to be a new kind of guy. If you notice in Indonesia’s recent history, it’s a kind of grim one. Dictatorships as brutal as you can imagine, ethnic cleansing, persecution of opposing people. So it’s a little rough to say the least. So when this guy came in and the things that were said about him. You think “well this guy comes from the Purish background in Indonesia. They have a really bad time getting representation.” And so you think to yourself, this guy might actually be different. His platform was egalitarian, transparency of the mechanizations of power, and just a more fair society. So if you’re going to say that, I think that extends to all levels, and should extend to people in prison for any crime, at all levels including the penal system.

Are you looking for overall clemency, or a pardon?
I mean, I’d like to see clemency or a pardon. I don’t want to differentiate between one person being more deserving than another. If we’re all living in a civilized world, or moving toward it, the death penalty just does not belong. Especially in the case of Lindsay Sandiford. How can you execute someone that was under pressure from outside forces trying to protect her family?

Does your policy on the death penalty vary depending on the crime? For example, a couple days ago a man was executed in Texas. He set someone’s house on fire, stabbed a lady, her two kids died in the fire and the lady died in the fire as well. He did sixteen years in prison, got out, and immediately beat a woman to death with a hammer and was executed a couple days ago. It’s like he was 67, so he was not eligible to be killed.
Here’s the thing, some of the key points, some of the short things of that was “he was in prison.” You can bet your life that there was no psychiatric analysis, or any adequate analysis of that guy. And so what was he going to do when he got out? If his state of mind was unchanged? He’s going to do the same thing again. And this is the point, people just go round and round in the prison system. If there was genuine research as to why people do certain things, then I think there would be some ways of moving to certain kinds of solutions. What has the death penalty done in that case? You put a guy into prison for sixteen years at whatever cost, he gets out and does the same thing again. A lot more needs to be done with psychiatric analysis to see why people do what they do, because clearly there’s something not quite right.

I’ll give you an example of something that happened in the UK. A guy, who in Birmingham in my town, lived in a community home, it was a residential thing where he was a paranoid schizophrenic basically. They already knew that. So the local government decided to close the care home to save funds, they literally set this guy on the street. This guy is walking around, and obviously fucking fireworks are going off in this guy’s head like 24/7. So he walked into town, and somehow got a pair of scissors from somewhere, walked into a department store and stabbed like five people. One lady was critically harmed. And of course the media was like “bring back capital punishment” and all of that. But then I’d say to that, whose fault is that? I’d suggest it’s the local authorities for not fully understanding the situation, he was out in the streets in the community without care. So maybe that’s a slight diversion from what we’re talking about, but I think it still illustrates that proper psychiatric analysis of how the brain works is essential. And I think the death penalty will really not be required.

As someone who’s been doing this for 20+ years on a personal and political level, how does it feel to have somebody to identify as a Napalm Death fan even though your political leanings are skewed so drastically? Do you make music that’s supposed to be intended for the president of Indonesia to digest, is it not meant for him or is it meant for anybody?
Well I mean you would hope, there’s a couple of ways of looking at this. I couldn’t sit here and tell you that I didn’t come from a left persuasion. That’s my family history, and how I grew up, and as a form of social justice, that’s what it meant to me. I also understand we’re Napalm Death. The ideal is to bring people together, not tear them apart. And so given that, I understand politics can be very divisive. It can be tokenistic, divisive, it can be absolutely fucking useless to be honest. Where I’m coming from with Napalm is from a humanitarian perspective. And not the interpretation that governments usually use, which to me is far from humanitarian. (laugh) It’s a genuinely sort of embracing of what it means to be a human being. Fuck me, there’s enough going on in this world where people have lost that feeling, which makes them do things to other people in the name of power grabs and whatever. There’s things beyond anything. So in that respect, it’s meant for everybody. And I would say if the president or somebody in power is kind of feeling it, or genuinely just likes the music, then that’s something. That’s kind of a result.

So I hope he does understand what we’re trying to say. Don’t get me wrong, normally at gigs there are people who are down with what we’re saying, other people just go there for music. I’m not gonna beat people with a stick with my ideals because they have to find it for themselves, I’m not going to be a good shepherd. So I guess it might be different with this case, because you really feel like it does get something out of it. That was a little bit of the result I was hoping.

Let’s say the President of Indonesia gave clemency to the all Ms. Sandiford as a token of a respect to you or your band, would those be acceptable terms, or just as unjust as what condemned them to die?
I mean here’s the thing mate, in terms of getting an in and everything, I see myself as irrelevant in this situation. I know I’ve been pushed into the spotlight a little bit, but honestly and I really mean this, whatever I get from it is kind of irrelevant. What I want is for these people to get clemency or a pardon. And that’s part of the reason-

If you were in the same situation, would you want somebody to reach out this way for you?
Oh absolutely. Why wouldn’t you? You and me both, I’m pretty sure on that. I’d hope that people out there would try and help me out.

If you were in this position what would you prefer, life in an Indonesian prison or the firing squad?
God, I don’t know how to even answer. I’d try and do the time in prison to be honest, I’ve kind of heard what the conditions are like. But if these australian guys who were just regular joes, just students and they managed to go to prison and make something of it and a positive contribution, why not? It’s really hard to say, but I think that would be my choice. But I also believe in choice, the right to die. If you feel like your life has sort of ended for all intents and purposes, you have that right. Not the states or anyone elses, but yours and yours alone.

Logan Worrell is CEO, CFO, Creative Director, and Head Bartender for the VICE Austin branch. Find him on Twitter.