Back in 1985, I was a young reporter new to Sydney, working for a weekly magazine. And one of my first assignments was to try to get an interview with a mother, Barbara Barlow, who was waiting for her son Kevin to be executed in Malaysian prison.
Kevin, a 28-year-old British-born welder from Perth, was arrested and charged with drug smuggling by authorities at Penang International Airport in Malaysia on November 9, 1983.
He and his co-accused, Brian Chambers, a builder from Sydney, were alleged to have been in possession of 178 grams of heroin in a duffel bag, which they were bringing back to Australia. It might not sound like a lot, but it was enough to get them both killed. Found guilty, they were the first “non-asian drug pushers” to be sentenced under Maylaysia’s harsh narcotics laws.
Kevin Barlow, on crutches, and his friend Brian Chambers, dark glasses, leave Penang High Court, Malaysia, after being sentenced to death for drug trafficking, on June 25, 1986
Barbara Chambers was a woman caught in her own personal hell. I first saw her briefly at Perth Airport when she returned home after son’s trial. A pensioner looking after a sick husband and a disabled younger son, she was distraught and unwilling to speak to anyone, let alone a young reporter she’d never seen before.
But the truth was she didn’t need to say anything to let us know how she felt. It was written in the anguished lines of her face, deeply etched into the dark circles around her eyes.
It was like looking into a nightmare. Much later we spoke on the phone. She was happy to talk to me but she didn’t want to do a sit down personal interview. At the time, she was holding onto a hope that she and her legal team might yet be able to turn a certain death sentence into a term of imprisonment.
There are, of course, two other Australian families in exactly the same position today as convicted Bali Nine drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran await their execution in Indonesia.
What I remember most about that telephone exchange with Barbara Barlow back in 1985 is her voice. It was harsh and tinged with both bitterness and fear. There was little hope to be found there, despite her words and more than a hint of desperation.
“No-one has the right to take another person’s life,” she told me. “That is what we are all taught from the youngest age. That’s what I grew up believing. I still do. I can only say that there must be a way through this, there must be. I hang on to that. But knowing Kevin is over there, knowing what he is facing, is hell.”
She sent telegrams to the Pope, Margaret Thatcher, the Queen of England, Australias foreign minister and the United Nations, begging for help to save her sons life. But the only person she heard back from was the Queen, who said she would pass Barbara’s letter to the appropriate minister, though Margaret thatcher did appeal to Malaysia for clemency.
It later emerged that Barbara had prepared a cocktail of drugs, which she smuggled into her son’s person cell so he could end his life instead of facing the hangman. But she didn’t have the courage to give it to him, and took it back to her hotel room instead.
In the end though, the Malaysians were determined to carry out the sentence. The two men were hanged in July 1986.
It was a display to the world that their new laws could not be flaunted, not by anyone. Barbara Barlow was not at her son’s execution. She watched it months later on film in New York. As she watched, she wept. Such is a mother’s lot in cases such as this. Unfortunately for Chan and Sukumaran and their still-hopeful families, history may be about to repeat itself.
