Hicks: Howard’s choice

By Cameron Hindrum

“As a people, Australians now face a decision of similar significance. They can break with Canberra’s policy and press their government to honour its commitments, under domestic and international law, to protect the human rights of all Australians … or they can support the Howard government’s decision to placate a powerful ally by consigning David Hicks to further inhumane torture and illegal incarceration … By treating David Hicks as an outcast, Australia now risks making itself a moral outcast in the community of nations.”

IN TODAY’S Examiner, Attorney-General Philip Ruddock dismisses as “generalised” the claims about the internment of David Hicks, raised in an article in the current issue of The Monthly.

“The idea that somebody is detained seems to me to be the very basis of the complaints,” the AG said (The Examiner, June 10, P 9.)

With typical contempt, Ruddock attempts to dissolve some extremely serious claims that are made in the article about the treatment of Hicks and other inmates held at Guantanamo Bay. Saying that Hicks has been detained is like saying the sun is warm.

I can only surmise that he has not read the article, by American academic Alfred W McCoy before dismissing it. This should not be a surprise — it reflects the Federal Government’s “nobody told me” attitude to issues that it would prefer to ignore, the best recent example of which is the AWB fiasco.

The article, by American academic Alfred McCoy, details specific instances of abuse and torture that Hicks has endured during his incarceration; ‘deprivation of light and auditory stimuli’; spending 15 hours in handcuffs so tight that his arms were numbed; spending 244 days in a cell without sunlight and heavily restricted human contact. To provide but three examples. Playing semantics is pointless: this is torture.

Ruddock’s contempt for the article only perpetuates his government’s dreadful legacy of human rights abuses. Alleged terrorist activity aside, Hicks remains an Australian citizen, and his ex-communication by Ruddock et al is an utter disgrace.

Let me quote from the conclusion of the article: “As a people, Americans are now faced with a decision … they can reject White House policy and join the international community by honouring their commitments, under the UN Convention and US law, to ban torture unconditionally. Or, they can agree with the Bush administration’s decision to make torture a permanent weapon in the arsenal of American power, paying what may be a prohibitive price …”

“As a people, Australians now face a decision of similar significance. They can break with Canberra’s policy and press their government to honour its commitments, under domestic and international law, to protect the human rights of all Australians … or they can support the Howard government’s decision to placate a powerful ally by consigning David Hicks to further inhumane torture and illegal incarceration … By treating David Hicks as an outcast, Australia now risks making itself a moral outcast in the community of nations.”

John Howard has established the tenor of his moral politics by recently vetoing laws in the ACT that would have allowed same-sex couples to enter into a civil union; he has also proved recently that he will apparently listen to Australians with his hasty decision to scrap the sale of the Snowy Hydro scheme.

These qualities of his leadership don’t extend to ensuring that an Australian imprisoned overseas will have access to the most basic dignities and legal rights.

Earlier:
Torture chamber
A father’s love