Read Axl Rose’s Letter to Indonesian President Regarding Bali Nine

Axl Rose sent a letter to Indonesian President Joko Widodo yesterday, pleading for clemency for two members of the so-called “Bali Nine” – nine people arrested in 2005 for allegedly planning to smuggle heroin out of Denpasar – and a woman accused of smuggling the drug into the country. Although the woman – Mary Jane Veloso – was spared after a person who claimed to have recruited her as a drug courier surrendered to police, according to The New York Times, the men Rose named in his letter – Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran – were executed. A rep for Rose tells Rolling Stone the singer decided to make his letter public because he was “quite upset with such injustice.”

“I appeal to you Mr. President, Mr. Joko Widodo to use your power…to show your country’s strength and allow the world to witness an extraordinary act of humanity and bravery on yours and your country’s part,” the Guns N’ Roses singer wrote in the letter, which he also sent to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, three ambassadors and the chairman of the National Commission on Human Rights of Indonesia. The full text of the letter is reprinted below.

“Their crimes were now long ago, their hearts and minds forever changed by their crimes,” Rose wrote. “In a world where the bad often outweighs the good and evil and negativity would appear more and more prevalent we need and can use every person choosing to make a difference…. In doing so we show the entire world that we are capable of forgiveness and mercy, a much greater sense of courage, strength and humanity and being so much more than that which seeks to overcome and destroy us.”

The singer wrote that not sparing the prisoners’ lives would be a “cold, cruel and uncaring message of hopelessness,” and he pleaded that Joko not be “blinded by rigidity and inflexibility.” He also called their death sentences “draconian” and the act of killing them “barbaric, backward and truly disgraceful.”

“It’s true I do not know these men nor have I met them but their story has touched me deeply,” Rose wrote. “I as well as many others could easily have found ourselves in their unfortunate and unarguably self-inflicted position. People make mistakes, sometimes big and horribly regrettable mistakes and sometimes more importantly people learn from their mistakes and make new choices, strive and succeed at true positive change. To not acknowledge and give such change the opportunity to prove it’s value would seem in this case a greater crime than those originally committed.”

Specifically regarding Veloso, Rose wrote that “executing those on the bottom rungs of the ladder in the chain of drug trafficking…seems more than unfair.”

“I realize I am no one and no one to get involved with your affairs or those of your government and how this letter reads or anyone other than yourself thinks of it is irrelevant,” Rose wrote. “Only the lives of these three human beings are what’s important now.”