Mission & Justice

Brendan Nicholson; 10/5/08

Three investigations are under way into allegations that Australian troops maltreated Afghan civilians captured during a raid on a bomb-making facility. The Australian Defence Force chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, said in Afghanistan that an initial inquiry carried out in country indicated there was no truth in the allegations but he had immediately sent two teams to the country to investigate further. One team consists of military police, who would thoroughly investigate the allegations. The second team would carry out a longer-term administrative investigation to see if any issues emerged that needed to be dealt with. As well, the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has launched

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10/5/08

Myanmar’s junta went ahead with a constitutional referendum on Saturday despite international calls to postpone it after the devastation of Cyclone Nargis. The vote was postponed by two weeks in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy delta and Yangon although voting went ahead in other parts of the country. The opposition had denounced the constitution and vote as an attempt by the military to legitimize its 46-year rule. Meanwhile, the United Nations has appealed for $187 million in aid for the more than one million victims of the cyclone that hit the country.

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10/5/08

Seven Red Cross aid workers, including four Australians, have received visas to enter cyclone-hit Burma. Australian Michael Annear, regional disaster response coordinator who has been in Burma since Tuesday, spoke to international media tonight. An estimated 1.5 million people have been left homeless by the deadly cyclone Nargis, which has killed an estimated 66,000 people. Red Cross workers in Burma have had two truckloads of aid supplies arrive, Mr Annear said.

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Graham Reilly; 8/5/08

The Burmese Government has put self-interest ahead of its duty to its citizens, writes Graham Reilly. For the long-suffering people of Burma, life is misery piled upon misery. Since 1962 they have struggled under the repressive rule of an isolationist, economically inept and intensely paranoid military regime immune to domestic and international pressure to introduce political freedom, personal liberty or human rights. Once the region’s rice bowl, the country is now an economic basket case crippled by spiralling inflation and the regime’s allocation of 40% of the national budget to the 400,000-strong military, a commitment that perpetuates its own power and wealth at the expense of the interests of ordinary Burmese.

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9/5/08

The first UN aid plane arrived in cyclone-ravaged Burma last night, but US and other international efforts were on hold after the country’s military generals rescinded their approval for American planes to enter Burma. The generals had bowed to international pressure, agreeing to allow the US military to fly critical aid to survivors of last Saturday’s cyclone, which has left up to 100,000 feared dead and one million missing. Thailand’s Supreme Commander Boonsrang Niumpradit said yesterday Bangkok had convinced Burma’s secretive junta to accept US assistance using planes that have been in Thai-US military exercises. A US embassy official confirmed the decision, but US ambassador to Thailand Eric John said later the flight was not going ahead.

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Sandra O’Malley; 8/5/08

Australia and New Zealand deny they have ditched the possibility of legal action to stop Japanese whaling. Rejecting a report that New Zealand had abandoned taking the legal route, both countries say it remains an option although a diplomatic solution remains their preferred course of action. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who is on two-day visit to Tokyo, insisted international legal action remained an option among Australia’s strategies to get Japan to stop the annual cull. “We’ll make a decision about the need for legal action in due course at a time of our own choosing, but we are very keen to exhaust diplomatic measures to try and bring this matter to a conclusion,” Mr Smith said.

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8/5/08

A Malaysian court has allowed a convert to renounce Islam, a rare decision for the conservative Muslim-led nation. Othman Ibrahim, Penang Sharia Court judge, said he had no choice but to allow an application by Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah, a Malaysian citizen of Chinese origin, to renounce her faith and return to Buddhism. Apostasy, or renouncing one’s faith, is one of the gravest sins in Islam and a very sensitive issue in Malaysia where Sharia courts have rarely allowed such renunciations and have also jailed apostates”The court has no choice but to declare that Siti Fatimah Tan Abdullah is no longer a Muslim as she has never practised the teachings of Islam,” Othman told a packed courtroom on Wednesday.

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8/5/08

Frustrated aid groups rounded on Burma’s military rulers last night, accusing them of letting cyclone survivors die while the junta blocked urgent visa applications from disaster experts. The junta stalled on issuing visas to aid workers as millions of people were left homeless in the wake of Cyclone Nargis and tens of thousands of bodies piled up in the disaster zone.  The number of dead and missing soared past 60,000 yesterday, and was expected to climb as a vast swath of Burma’s inundated delta region remained cut off. Entire towns were swept away by the storm and ocean surge, leaving millions homeless and lacking food and clean water, triggering fears disease could push the death toll still higher.

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Dennis Shanahan; 8/5/08

Australia is likely to abandon its $1 million attempt to take Japan to the international court over whaling after New Zealand gave up its plans to use legal action to stop the annual cull. The Rudd Government embraced the use of the UN’s international court soon after theelection, using aircraft and ships to gather evidence against Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.  But the New Zealand Government has since discovered “significant difficulties” with taking Japan to the international court and has abandoned the tactic.

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Mark Dodd; 7/5/08

The Burmese junta last night threw a roadblock in the path of the biggest regional rescue operation since the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, as the toll from Cyclone Nargis rose to 22,500 dead with a further 41,000 people missing. The scale of the disaster in the military-ruled Southeast Asian nation had drawn a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches after the 2004 tsunami that killed 220,000 people in the region. But last night, Social Welfare Minister Maung Maung Swe said foreign aid teams wanting to enter the country to help with the relief effort would have to negotiate with the regime to be granted access. “For expert teams from overseas to come here, they have to negotiate with the Foreign Ministry and our senior authorities,” he said in Rangoon.

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