Watching this Youtube video brought tears to my eyes. It shows what
seems to be a typical Sunday religious service at a small church.
A
young African man, accompanied by an Asian guitarist, sings a heartfelt
gospel song as the audience sings along. But the camera does not show
the security guards, iron bars and barbed wire fences that would have
indicated this was no ordinary place.
The singer, 41 year Okwudili
Oyatanze who was executed today in Indonesia, was giving his regular
performance at a penitentiary outside the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
Known in Indonesia’s penal system as “The Death Row Gospel Singer,” Mr.
Oyatanze was arrested in 2001 while trying to smuggle 5.5 pounds of
heroin through Jakarta’s international airport, in his stomach, after
arriving on a flight from Pakistan. He was convicted the following year
and sentenced to death. Mr. Oyatanze made the most of his incarceration,
writing more than 70 songs and recording multiple albums behind bars.
He has performed with prison guards as well as fellow inmates. In the
Youtube video, shot in 2008, Mr. Oyatanze sang his song “God You Know,”
which was also the name of an album he released that year. “He has
turned his life around in jail,” said the Rev. Charles Burrows, a
Catholic priest from Ireland who now lives in Indonesia and offered
religious counseling to Mr. Oyatanze before his execution today. Raised
in Biafra, a strifetorn region in southeastern Nigeria, Mr. Oyatanze
started a garment business in 1999, traveling to Indonesia to buy
clothing and resell it in Nigeria. The business collapsed, and Mr.
Oyatanze, heavily in debt, traveled to Pakistan to try to revive it, at
the suggestion of a fellow Nigerian living there. The plan involved
swallowing capsules of heroin before boarding a flight to Jakarta.
“There was a chance to earn some easy money, so he became a courier,”
Mr. Burrows said.
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