Injustice for someone else
The main story is not David Hicks. The main story is a willingness of two allegedly democratic governments prepared to throw every legal principle out the window and establish a process that we would expect of tyrannical regimes. That our own democracies should be prepared to so abandon the rule of law for an expedient and as I believe, evil purpose should greatly disturb all of us. But how many are concerned? Too many are not concerned because they believe that such a derogation of justice can only apply to people who are different, in some indefinable way.
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I am deeply concerned at the abandonment of justice and the rule of law which has recently occurred, and so are all my friends. Thank you for persisting to publicise this issue
Anne
Our democracy is weakening.
The David Hicks case revealed Australians have a limited awareness of what their rights are in a democracy.
We fool ourselves that we have democracy in this country. Our leaders act as dictators, dispensing with any law which does not suit them, and introducing retrospective new laws to suit their purposes, without reference to their constituents. Eastern cultures which see our country as evil have produced suicide-bombers and terrorists. Our own government, in demonising eastern culture, is acting in the same erroneous way. We have invaded Iraq, and hung their leader. We lock up people indefinitely and torture them. What our government says it hates in other cultures, it has become. Open your eyes Howard.
I never knew how the people of Europe allowed Fascism and Communism to take over their societies, nor why ordinary people did not speak out loudly. I now know. Our Govt.and the US have been able to override the law and the international community in their treatment of Hicks. His treatment becomes a warning to all. When they suspended the law for one and our Govt. did nothing, we all lost our rights.
We are rapidly turning into a society of selfish introverts. We were not always this way. This is a recent event, which is in large part a result of a relentless media drive to create a ‘them’ and ‘us’ wedge in our sense of fairness. David is damned by our selfishness all the more because he jumped the fence and joined ‘them’. This is a tragic turn of affairs in our evolution as a society, because we are rapidly succumbing to intellectual apathy and uncritical acceptance of what the media and the authorities feed us. That is never wise, nor will it stop with David. Today Hicks - tomorrow you. In the end, it has to be said, a people deserve the leaders they get, but pity the poor bugger who voted with his eyes open.
What the David Hicks case has proven is that justice is but a feeble and delicate thing that only exists when a society is willing to stand up for what is right.
Unfortunately, the ‘neo-conservative’ practice of promoting the individual over and above the society as a whole has led to an erosion of something that once underpinned the very definition of a democratic society–fairness and justice.
It is tragic to believe that we are heading so far down this dangerous path (America has been there for years - remember MacCarthyism?) and so few Australians seemed concerend. They acknowledge that he was poorly treated, yet they think that it’s ok, because he pleaded guilty to terrorism. Those of us who fought to have him freed weren’t fighting for David Hicks, we were fighting for democracy, decency and the rule of law.
It is indeed a sad reflection of our society that we have not stood up and put an end to the farce that has become “the war on terror” and the abandonment of the basic rules of law and human rights that our governments say we need to dispense with in order to fight the foe so likely to destroy our way of life. It is indeed hard not to wear our cynacism on our sleaves , imagine Australian troops, American or English troops being held in Guantanimo Bay style facilties , it would be enough to start a war let alone finnish one, and yet we recoil in horror when those opposed to this speak out or try to wage war against us.Middle Australlia seems to be developinng a nuke’em kind of attitude with that single brain cell football club mentality that is so very easy to foster within our country.
Our abandonment of our basic principles in relation to fairness , law and basic human rights pours fuel all over the fire of hate and gives a ligitamacy to the other side.This is our legacy.
John Locke, in 1690, said “Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins.” Unfortunately, we’ve elected a government that will do anything to retain its power and increase it. It showed absolute contempt for all of our rights in trampling on those David Hicks. His guilt, or innocence, is immaterial. John Howard and his henchmen connived with the U.S. Administration to allow him to rot in an illegal concentration camp for years. He abrogated his duty to bring him home until it was politically imperative. His motive was evil, and some might say Treasonable.
Even worse, most Australians were unaware of the terrible thing happening to our country. Many may have fallen victim to John Howard’s cunning that demonises those who don’t fall in with his views, and masks his true intentions. We should all look to see what is behind his words. In this case it is his naked attempt to set himself above the law. We must keep this issue open until the election
It is clear that the current govt. has been willing to publicly abandon the rule of law to curry favour with one of the most questionable powers in the world today. The AWB scandal shows that they can be publicly ‘not responsible’ for an international crime of that magnitude. Since my birth in 1954 I have witnessed the erosion of democracy along with other things I thought being Australian meant. The recent awkward discussion on ‘mateship’ failed everywhere to mention the pivotal quality of loyalty. Far beyond that, & beyond talk about people & governments not trusting each other, it now appears that treating Australians with open contempt can be achieved without risk to a sitting government. I have never felt so disenfranchised & betrayed - so helpless against the continuing & insidious perversion of what I knew as democracy. To carry on, I need to separate ‘Australia’ from ‘Australian Government’ for the time being, and hope that we will lift our game as a republic.
Roger Kelly has neatly summed up how a lot of us are feeling at the moment, I think.
There are times when I feel I am becoming a tourist in a rapidly changeing Kafkaesque landscape.