"Terrorism and Australian values – two recent "Canberra Times" readings" -

commentary by Tony Kevin, 7 August 2005

I was watching our Prime Minister on ABC TV "The Insiders" today 7 August, talking about terrorism and what policies we should be looking at to keep it out of Australia. He said some civilised and moderate things, about the law and about intelligence failure and about the need to engage in real dialogue with Australian Muslim leaders. I was feeling quite unusually relaxed and comfortable (whereas normally watching our Prime Minister sends my blood pressure right off the dial), until I heard him say this:

"But you [the whole Australian community, including Islamic Australians] also have the responsibility to endorse and imbibe and embrace the values of our society. And that, of course, includes free speech, but it also includes a respect for religious difference and it includes a total repudiation and rejection of violence or the preaching of violence or the endorsement of violence as a solution to political disputes."

And suddenly the spell was broken, and the whiff of hypocrisy was rank in the air again. I realised our Great Leader was, as usual in his calm commonsense way, drawing a red line around Australia in proposing that there are rules of societal behaviour ("values", he calls them) we operate under here in our little corner of Paradise.

But outside our borders (or even within our maritime zones of border protection, or our detention centres which private companies have been running for years outside the effective reach of Australian law), please don’t expect those same rules or values to apply. We can lock people up indefinitely as a deterrent to unauthorised attempts to enter Australia by other non-Australians – in effect, we can hold them as hostages. We can threaten, fire upon, trick, cheat and brutalise people who seek refuge with us in small boats. We can perhaps let 353 people be drowned on SIEV X as the final deterrent, and close down any judicial investigation of those mass deaths. We can definitely put 229 people’s lives on Olong (SIEV 4) at great risk for 22 hours, and get away with it. Similarly we can leave over 400 people on board an immobilised and sinking Palapa during an overnight storm that might have drowned them all had their fragile overloaded boat foundered, just 60 miles from Christmas Island, and get away with that too.

We can make war on a sovereign country Iraq based on claimed evidence that this country was preparing to use WMD against other countries, that we knew to be false at the time. We can order our SAS to invade Iraq and shoot down its soldiers who were patrolling in their own land in what they thought was peacetime, 30 hours before we even bothered to tell our own Parliament and people that our hostilities against Iraq were (now) about to commence. We can help plan and implement the destruction of Fallujah, a city of 250,00 people, killing thousands of civilians and turning 200,000 people into refugees, and get away with it. We can help our US ally cover up criminal tortures at Abu Ghraib and in other US military prisons in Iraq, and get away with it. And so on and on.

You understand the distinction: rule of law and "Australian values" at home, but whatever it takes abroad. And then if caught, deny, deny, deny, and cover-up, cover-up, cover-up.

But what are 230,000 Australian Muslims – the good majority, not the extremist minority - supposed to make of this blatant hypocrisy, this double standard of values we seem to live by quite comfortably in Australia now? Are they supposed dutifully to agree - "that’s OK then, we are Australians now, and we really don’t care what cruelties and injustices are inflicted by Australia and/or its powerful ally on our co-religionists (often, our former fellow nationals) in countries like Iraq, or Afghanistan, or maybe down the track, Iran - or, for that matter, by the state of Israel on the Palestinians?". Are they supposed to just turn a blind eye to what the Australian government is involved in, in and around the Islamic countries region of the world? Matters of high politics too complex for them to understand, perhaps ?

 

Howard’s ability to slip and slide between what we rightly aren’t allowed to do at home in Australia, and what we are allowed – indeed, expected as a matter of patriotism and loyalty to allies – to do in places like Iraq or on our maritime border approaches, is what needs to be exposed here. Just to emphasise my stance, I abhor terrorism of any kind from any source, including state-inspired terrorism from any source. I also dislike hypocrisy, especially in my country’s leadership. It shames and sickens me.

What is Howard going to say to Australia’s Islamic community leaders about these issues when he meets them? Does he think they cannot follow through a train of logical thought on the above lines? Are they supposed to put their brains and consciences to sleep for this meeting ? What will he say to "reasonable" community leaders like Waleed Aly – reputedly, a good bloke because he likes AFL football ( I must be OK too, because I like rugby) ? This same Waleed Aly had some wise things to say in the Canberra Times op-ed pages a few days ago:

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?story_id=
413952&y=2005&m=8&class=Your+say&subclass=
General&category=Editorial+Opinion&class_id=11

"All mourn, but none take responsibility in the terrorism debate", by Waleed Aly, Canberra Times, Friday, 5 August 2005

VICTIM status clearly has its benefits. It provides a rhetorical platform from which many attempt to justify their more dubious actions. This is why it is so feverishly sought in conflict. So it is unsurprising that our political leaders would be keen, in the aftermath of the London bombings, to argue that terrorists are motivated by nothing more than a hatred for Western values and freedoms. None would accept that it had anything to do with Iraq. We must be utterly blameless. For people in the position of Howard, Blair or Bush, this is the only politically correct answer.

The supporting evidence is as simple as it is simplistic. Western nations were targets before the Iraq war. Both September 11, 2001 and the Bali bombings pre-date the 2003 invasion.

Then of course, through the 1980s and '90s there were attacks on US marine barracks, warships, embassies and even on the World Trade Centre. So, you see, we played no role in this. Our subsequent action is therefore as innocent as our victimhood. We did not start this war, but we dare not leave it unfinished.

And so, when British police put eight bullets into the head of Jean Charles de Menezes because they decided incorrectly and on little evidence that he was a would-be suicide bomber, our reaction is mute. A column in the London Times noted how astonishing it was that so many people reacted with "Oh dear, but ..." and that in response, "society shrugs its shoulders." The Australian simply pointed the finger. De Menezes was "a victim of the Islamist fanatics," it opined. "The ultimate blame belongs to the terrorists who have made London a city under siege."

No doubt, the terrorists would lay the "ultimate blame" back at Britain's feet for the London bombing. When the sickening Al-Muhajiroun organisation in Britain held a first-anniversary celebration of the "magnificent" events of September 11, a spokesman contextualised that terrorism by insisting they do not start wars, but they will finish them as they deem necessary.

Sound familiar? There is no moral equivalence between terrorism and Western foreign policy, but we should all be concerned about this game of "ultimate blame". Here are two equal but opposite narratives; two sides of the same fatalistic, dangerous coin, where each finds the root cause of every tragedy exclusively in the other. Both construct an eternal ideological enemy with whom there can be no dialogue. Both rest on the total abdication of responsibility. And both deal selectively with the facts.

True, there was terrorism before Iraq. But then before Iraq there were US troops in Saudi Arabia, and there was the devastating legacy of colonialism. There were (and are) oppressive regimes in the Muslim world that were supported by, and remain allied to, the West. There was the perception of, as London mayor Ken Livingstone put it, "80 years of Western intervention in Arab land because of our need for oil." And of course there was Palestine. And yes, there was Iraq, too. Muslims agonised over the 1991 Gulf War and the crippling UN sanctions, partly enforced by Australia, that UNICEF say claimed the lives of over half a million children under five.

This prompted former UN Assistant Secretary General Dennis Halliday to resign because he refused to preside over what he considered a genocide. Muslims remembered and deeply internalised the comment by then Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 1996 that this human cost, which she did not dispute, was "worth it".

All this forms part of the terrorist discourse. It is true that the current Iraqi quagmire is not the sole cause of terrorism, but it is rank folly to assert that Western policies in the Muslim world play no role at all. Similarly, while the West is complicit in many innocent Muslim deaths, terrorism is not exclusively a response to injustice against Muslims. Indeed it claims more Muslim lives than any others. Suicide bombers in Iraq kill 80 of their co-religionists per week. The majority of the 88 victims in the recent Sharm el-Sheikh bombing were ordinary Egyptians.

The war on terror's cycle of violence is not simple, but we refuse to engage with the complexities. We have relinquished the middle ground in the terrorism debate, and turned this human tragedy into a game of self-serving rhetoric. Merely to reconsider the policies behind the grievances of the Muslim world is now derisively dismissed as appeasement. To condemn the terrorist atrocities of New York, Madrid, Beslan and London without using the opportunity to vent about Iraq is slammed as apologetic.

All mourn, but none take responsibility. So the deadly dance goes on. Apparently, political and rhetorical death is worse than the death of ordinary people in London or Falluja.

Melbourne lawyer Waleed Aly is on the executive of the Islamic Council of Victoria .ENDS

 

And while we are looking at my fine local newspaper, read also this commendably hard-hitting commentary by Senior Editor Jack Waterford buried away in yesterday’s Canberra Times ‘Panorama’ liftout magazine, about the disturbing events following the tragic alleged hit-and-run a week ago, of an unsuspecting young woman (now fighting for her life) by a speeding stolen car driven by an alleged 14 year old car thief allegedly being chased by police (in an unmarked police car, but with sirens blaring) at speeds of up to 100 kph through a pedestrians-and-buses only interchange area (that is always banned to cars) in Canberra City. Note the questions Waterford asks – valid, worrying questions - about the conduct then and since of the Australian Federal Police, our local police force in Canberra.

This is the same AFP that runs a people smuggling disruption program (with DIMIA) in our neighbouring South East Asian countries; the same force that refuses to answer any public accountability questions about what it knew about SIEV X. This makes Waterford’s questions about what happened in Canberra’s city centre a week ago all the more disturbing. Where do John Howard’s Australian values fit in here? In what way are they protecting that poor young girl and her grieving parents ? One death or near-death, 353 deaths …the same societal rules of public accountability Waterford discusses should apply in both cases.

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=your%20say&subclass=
general&category=editorial%20-%20leader&story_id=414240&y=2005&m=8
(second page missing- text inserted below by me)

"Justice must be seen to be done" by Jack Waterford, Addendum column, Panorama, Canberra Times, Saturday, 6 August 2005

A TRAGIC accident early on Saturday morning may reflect a new democracy, or vehicle thereof, in Canberra, one of the most computer- literate cities in the world. The odd thing, so far, is that few of the powers that be seem to have noticed it.

Clea Rose, aged 21, had been out with friends on Friday night when, at about 12.15am she was run over by a speeding car in East Row near the Civic bus interchange. She is still fighting for her life.

A tragedy by any standards, but compounded in this case by suggestions that the car that struck her was at the time, or shortly before, being chased by an unmarked police car.

At least one of the youths in the car, which is said to have been stolen, has been charged in the Children's Court. Even before he was arrested, it was being alleged that the car had been involved in a police chase in streets around Civic, and at speeds of up to 100km/h.

There were initial denials by police that any police car had been involved, then an admission that there had been a chase of sorts, but one which was said to have terminated before the stolen car had entered East Row. Then an attempted police media blackout, on the grounds that the whole circumstances of the accident were now subject to an internal review by the Australian Federal Police Professional Standards Unit.

During the week, it emerged that video cameras, erected in the area after a political law-and-order campaign, were said not to have been working at the relevant time. I'm sure this is true, though it would be understating the reaction to say that this regretful police announcement was greeted with about the same amount of public cynicism as news of the missing 17 minutes in President Nixon's office tape recordings. Just why do these unfortunate mishaps always occur at just the moment when the conduct of police, rather than citizens, is under scrutiny?

Some other cynics have noted that if, as some people who say they were witnesses allege, the police car was still in hot pursuit, and at high speed at the time of the collision, much more may be involved than questions of the wisdom of police getting involved in high-speed chases, particularly in areas thick with people.

It would also involve questions of whether the driver of the police car failed to stop at the scene of an accident, or otherwise failed to stop to render assistance to the girl who was hit. The primary responsibility for the collision may remain with the person driving the stolen car, who may or may not be proved to be the person who is charged. But some share of the moral responsibility - and even the civil-law liability - may shift in such a circumstance.

I have no direct knowledge of the facts, and am not jumping to conclusions. It is my experience, moreover, that police internal investigations are often more rigorous than people expect, and that those involved are harder to fool than police supervisors or police public- relations officers.

What I do know is that the incident has attracted many letters to the editor, not least to the much more informal Have Your Say letters column on our online site. The trend of these letters has been to express amazement at police denials of a chase, or of a chase in progress at the time, based on the statements of correspondents that they were there and saw what happened. Or, that if they did not see the collision, say they saw some part of the supposed chase.

It underlines a point I tried to make in Sunday's paper, on the question of whether Canberra is boring. During the early hours of the morning, when boring old farts like me are asleep, or at home with our cocoa, hundreds, often thousands, of young people are about on the streets of Civic, Manuka, Kingston and other places.

They may not, primarily by virtue of their age, have instant access to or power with the media, but they have ways of having their voice heard. Their claims about what they saw are being heard on talk-back radio, in Internet chat-rooms, and in forums such as Have Your Say.

I doubt that the Professional Standards Unit has made any serious attempt to track their allegations down - in many cases that may be difficult, given the capacity for anonymity that some such forums afford. Yet findings that ignore or fail to deal with such allegations are likely to lead to rejection of the report among a constituency that is very important to the police. It may even go further towards undermining confidence in the police, not only among young people, but among their parents as well.

A sentiment expressed, for example, by one of our letter-writers who remarked, "The hit and run in Civic on Friday night poses some problems for our community. The young people who witnessed the event are friends and acquaintances of my eldest child. These are not people who are involved in some conspiracy against the cops; they are, in the main, law-abiding and respectable members of the community. They do insist they saw a police chase and wonder why the police and media are likewise insisting that what they witnessed was not the case.

"As a parent, I have brought my children up to respect the integrity of the law. However I am in despair when the law does not admit liability. These young people, perhaps above we older people, are prepared to forgive a mistake, honestly and forthrightly admitted. Combined with an assurance that future behaviour will be addressed and changed.

"They are more probably likely to forgive some testosterone- and/or adrenaline-driven police officers who mistakenly pursue young offenders through one of the main night-places of Canberra than perhaps, their parents would.

"Please, AFP, demonstrate what you want your offenders to do. Admit your fault and agree to reparation. It won’t heal the pain, but it may help demonstrate that adults and those in authority hold by some kind of moral authority."

This person has no personal knowledge and is depending on hearsay, which she judges, perhaps wrongly, to be sincere and correct, of what occurred. If she is wrong, her argument that police ought to ‘fess up and make reparation does not hold. But the point that police reputation, and respect for the law, might suffer from any perception that the matter is not rigorously investigated remains

Tears in the fabric will not be repaired if the matter is treated as just a public-relations problem, particularly when many people perceive the police public-relations arm, rightly enough, as being interested only in marketing the police, telling "good" stories and in deflecting or smothering demands for any actual information which could be embarrassing or which does not fit within the strategy. Put bluntly, there is not enough credit in the bank.

The way young people communicate these days may well include photographs taken on mobile telephones. I do not know, but given the sorts of photographs that people who play with such toys do take, it would not surprise me in the least.

During the week, various people of national-security bent, of the view that all citizens should be constantly on the alert for an Islamist suicide bomber, were urging people to take photographs of people who look suspicious.

My fridge magnet is not quite clear on where one should forward such photographs – though I am sure there is, or soon will be such a place – but one can well imagine this sort of thing creating an enormous public nuisance and great possibilities of mischief. Mercifully, however, the problem will not be in a shortage of people to process the products of this new species of Neighbourhood Watch.

National security is proving one of the biggest job-creation programs since the rebuilding of Cologne, though with rather less to show as a result.

No doubt my scepticism about its value will be used to demonstrate that I am a naive fool, if or when we have a terrorist incident. But even if we have such an incident, which DV [God willing] we don’t, I shall be interested to hear the theories about how even more of what we are getting might have prevented it. ENDS.

 

 

 

 

.