Bali 9: The Untold Story Read Online Free PDF Page A

working at a string of places serving food and washing cars before taking on a casual job at acatering company that serviced the Sydney Cricket Ground. Chan called himself a logistics helper, but the job description was akin to being a food runner.
    Chan, if you take it on the say-so of many of those who know him, can be a chameleon. He is either a menace or a clown; a good friend or a dangerous foe. People either like him or loathe him—there aren’t many emotions in between. But certainly he was a teenager who seemed to struggle to find his place in the big melting pot of western Sydney. Most of his self-confidence was bluff, but he wielded it effectively, and sometimes with intimidation.
    The role Chan seemed to drift towards constantly was that of a small-time brute. He was loud. He could be a bully. And he demanded respect. Indeed, the most important thing to him seemed to be the accolades of others. His friends were almost all Asian, and he wanted them to look up to him. He wanted to be their leader.
    ‘Back in those days it was kind of hard for us,’ explains one of his friends who has considered travelling to Bali to see him. The streets of western Sydney were bubbling away with all sorts of gang activity, and Asian boys found themselves easy prey for other groups looking for a quick fight or to mark out their own territory. ‘It’s just that if we [were] in a group and then another group comes by or something, there was likely to be trouble. He [Chan] wasn’t a bad guy at all. To his friends, he was very loyal. He had respect for a lot of us and we had a lot of respect for him too. Hemight just look like a bad person but the real Andrew that no one really knows, he’s not like that.’
    The friend talks about low-level gang activity—like knocking off someone’s wallet or handbag, vandalism and the odd fight—as just part of the make-up of the day on some western Sydney streets. And he laughs at the description of Chan as a small-time gangster, the term given to him by some people.
    ‘It was just boys being boys really. He would intimidate a few people here and there. But it wasn’t just him. The whole school would tease…you know how it is, in every school there’s always a guy who will get teased no matter what. It’s not just Andrew doing it. It’s really everyone doing it, but because Andrew is the type of person to joke around more, to other people’s eyes it might seem a bit serious, but everyone knew he was just joking around, having a laugh.’
    The word ‘gang’ keeps coming up when Chan’s background is discussed, but it’s used fairly loosely. To the public, ‘gang’ usually denotes small and often ethnic groups of male teenagers, prowling western Sydney creating waves of crime with violence and standover tactics. And these groups exist, but gangs of young youths drawn together by boredom just as much as ethnicity also form part of the subculture of many Sydney suburbs.
    Of the Lebanese and Middle Eastern gangs in Bankstown and Canterbury or the Asian groups inCabramatta, some are dangerous and territorial, luring in adolescent boys and spitting out hardened criminals. The gang people talk about when describing Andrew Chan’s teenage years was not like that. It was more like a loose group of Asian boys, linked by friendship and background, brought up in similar families in the city’s suburban melting pots. There are hundreds of them across Sydney—teenagers who would meet before and after school, hanging out in shopping malls and public places, going to the movies, sitting in parks, and spending money in loud, dark game parlours. Crimes are committed, but they are hardly ever violent. Bag-snatches, petty theft, the odd brawl with another group of boys—that’s the type of gang both Chan’s friends and foes describe when talking about the young man Indonesian intelligence officers marked early as a ringleader.
    Chan’s friend says that the way Chan has been painted, as using