No one would have wept for these men 10 years ago.

So much will be lost when these two men are killed.

It’s true. Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran did bad things. It’s not a secret – they tried to smuggle drugs between Indonesia and Bali. By the time they were arrested, trying to get 8.3kg of heroin into Australia, Andrew Chan had reportedly already made two other trips between the two countries.

The former school friends from Sydney’s Homebush High recruited seven other young people to help them with their work. When their mules were picked up at the Denpasar airport, Chan had already boarded a plane back to Sydney, while Sukumaran was at a hotel, with the rest of the couriers, and bags of drugs.

The pair, collared as the ring-leaders, never gave up those higher up the chain, the ones who were ultimately responsible for their miserable fate.

Yes, these men did bad things.

But the two men who will almost certainly die in a matter of days, in the dead of night, executed by a line of hooded men who are being paid to end their lives, are not the same men who arrived at Kerobokan Prison in Bali 10 years ago.

More: The Bali Nine duo have arrived on Execution Island.

Back then, only their mothers would have wept for them. But now, when the time comes, there will be thousands crying for them.

Hundreds of those will be in the jail they left behind yesterday. It will be a more bleak and dangerous place without them.

Artist Ben Quilty, who has become a close friend of Myuran’s in Kerobokan says his friend has become an extraordinary person in jail.

“The man that he is. I’m very proud of him. I’m very proud of what he’s done,” Quilty told Radio National on the day after he returned from Bali for his final workshop and visit with his friend. “He’s done a full [fine art] degree inside Kerobokan Prison. He got off drugs. He built a castle for himself.”

An exhibition of Myuran’s paintings was held in Melbourne last year [post continues after video]:

Myuran’s restorative art classes didn’t only benefit him. Anyone was welcome, as long as they played by his strict no-drugs rules. Myuran has managed to build a TAFE-like atmosphere of learning in one of the world’s roughest prisons, with cooking, English and computer lessons all on the table. The vast majority of pupils in these classes were young Indonesians, and according to Quilty, “Myu” wanted to make certain that the classes were also open to the jail’s women.

Read more: Julie Bishop on the Bali 9: “Myuran and Andrew deserve to live”.

“One of the most tragic things about this is that there are a whole group of people in there…  who will lose the social order and the safety and the drug-free educational environment that Myruan has built on his own. That will fall apart without Myuran in there.”

In jail, while Myu found art and education, Andrew Chan found God.

In the last few weeks, Myu was awarded his Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Andrew was ordained a Pastor.

“He has wanted to become a pastor since the moment he began his transformation,” Christie Buckingham, a senior pastor with the Bayside Church in Melbourne told Fairfax Media.  “For him his faith is his life and no half measures would work for him. He wants to do his best and be his best – not for himself but as part of the responsibility he feels towards others.”

Andrew has set up rehabilitation classes for inmates in Kerobokan. Counselling broken and addicted inmates, he has helped hundreds of people through a bleak situation. And despite the horror of his own fate, he has reached out to others when they needed it.

Bridget Harris is a young mother from Sydney. Her father, Nigel Allan, was a motivational speaker who wrote a book, The Key to Life, which Andrew Chan came to admire from inside jail, and he began to correspond with Bridget’s father, who died last year. Bridget says:

I had the pleasure of speaking with Andrew numerous times throughout the last six months as he was a dear friend of my late father who who had a part to play in his rehabilitation and passed away just before Christmas and .

Andrew, even in the four walls of his prison cell, surrounded by fear and darkness, personally helped me through one of the darkest times in my own life with my father’s sudden passing. Even staring in the face of death himself, Andrew spoke words of comfort to me and my family, he prayed with us and checked in on us – even while he was on death row – Andrew helped me find light in the dark. The proof of rehabilitation isn’t just in the artworks of Myuran, or the ordained minister that Andrew has recently become… It is in those quiet moments, the ones where I felt so alone , that Andrew reached out and gave his last glimmers of peace and comfort to me and my family even when he needed them the most.

It is hard to fathom how he could muster the strength to write a heartfelt eulogy for my father’s funeral, it is mind boggling to imagine him sitting in that dark prison cell praying for me and my family while he was living in his own hell.. It is humbling to realise that when he had nothing to give, he gave all he had to bring comfort to me.

THAT is a reformed person. THAT is the proof that this man has changed for the better.

Yes, only families would have cried for these men 10 years ago, but the people who will leave this world in a few short days are not those men.

And we will all be crying for them.

The Mercy Campaign want to continue to show just how many Australians are angered and saddened by what’s happening to Andrew and Myuran. Please show your support for them and their families by signing the petition, here.