Mission & Justice

Hamish McDonald; 19/7/08

Hilario Madeira was the sort of priest who makes you understand how the balance of the global Catholic congregation is shifting to the developing world, away from a jaded Europe. I met him in August 1999 about two weeks before his martyrdom, in his simple church in the town of Suai on the south coast of East Timor, after he conducted a mass for the hundreds of villagers taking refuge in the church grounds and the half-built shell of a new cathedral.

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Peter Gregory; 19/7/08

Years after they were held on Nauru, or forced to leave the country, two Iraqi refugees and an American peace activist are a step closer to learning why they were considered a danger to Australia. Scott Parkin, a US campaigner now working on climate change issues in his home country, has the highest profile of the three men trying to see the details of their adverse security assessments by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. But Iraqis Mohammed Yussef Sagar and Muhammad Faisal can probably claim to have suffered the most. According to a judgement delivered yesterday by a full bench of the Federal Court, the pair was held in detention at Nauru between 2002 and 2005 before the Immigration Department determined they were entitled to be recognised as refugees. Their visa applications were then refused after ASIO provided their assessments.

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Richard Ackland; 18/7/08

In the very day this week that the full Federal Court was ever so gently reading up our rights by doing away with the World Youth Day regulation that clumsily sought to protect “pilgrims” from annoyance, a different bench of the court in Melbourne was reading down our rights, with much more serious and fundamental implications. That court confirmed the right of the Federal Government to interfere in decisions affecting the basic human rights of Australian citizens. We enter the province of the Attorney-General’s magic certificates in so-called security cases. Syed Mustapha Hussain is the man at the eye of this storm. He’s a 24-year-old Australian citizen. He came to this country with his family in 1991, went to school in Melbourne and enrolled in a bachelor of medical science degree course at La Trobe University.

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Sian Powell; 18/7/08

The Indonesian Supreme Court has rejected the Bali bombers’ last legal challenge, clearing the way for imminent executions. At the same time, Australian survivors of the Bali bombers have been notified by the Australian Federal Police that the three bombers may soon face a firing squad. Tracy Ball and her sister, Melinda Kent, were terribly burned by the 2002 bombings on the Kuta strip in Bali. “The AFP rang my sister to say that the last-ditch appeal had been thrown out, and their executions were imminent,” Ms Ball said yesterday. “I believe it, if AFP says it, but I’ll believe they’re executed when they’re executed

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Joseph A. Kechichian; 17/7/08

It took 45 years for a leading journalist like Harold Meyerson to ask why 58,193 Americans [as well as an estimated 2 million Vietnamese] died during the Vietnam War. How many years will it take for folks to wonder why 4,121 [as of July 15] Americans and more than a million Iraqis perished in Mesopotamia? This comparative question is not raised often, but in light of recent pronouncements by the presumed Democratic and Republican candidates for the presidency of the US, it may be useful to ask it even if foreign policy issues are almost always less important than domestic concerns - dominated in 2008 by high energy prices and falling real estate values. In an opinion piece published by The New York Times [and reproduced yesterday in Gulf News], Senator Barack Obama articulated his plan for Iraq, calling for a “phased redeployment of combat troops”. He promised to end the war if he becomes president. Obama emphasised that “it was a grave mistake … to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks”.

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Geoff Elliott; 17/7/08

There is deepening concern that Australia’s intelligence agencies and those of other key US allies could be compromised in the fight against al-Qa’ida and other radical Islamist groups because of a controversial US Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court decision last month provided new rights to enemy combatants held at Guantanamo, who include Bali bombing mastermind Hambali. It is dawning on foreign intelligence operatives that it has opened the door to the possibility that the information they share with Washington could be aired in civilian courts. British and European allies are demanding answers from the US security apparatus, according to John Lehman, a former navy secretary and member of the 9/11 Commission that investigated the terror

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Mel Frykberg, 17/7/08

During the last few weeks Israeli troops have raided and closed down mosques, medical centers, charities, soup kitchens and shopping malls in Nablus, confiscating computers and buses, and causing extensive damage, as they target Hamas-linked institutions which they claim are “supporting terrorism,” in a bid to stem the growing influence the Islamic organization has over the West Bank. Not only has this move failed to stem the enthusiasm and empathy many Palestinians have for Hamas, and the support it provides for disadvantaged Palestinians; but it also appears to be backfiring with the moderate and pro-Western Palestinian Authority (PA) and in the process, narrowing the gap, however minutely, between the PA and Hamas.

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Norman Solomon; 16/7/08

We often have an image of the journalist as a consummate professional who provides the requisite summary of events with almost scientific precision. While it is true that the news coverage we get is often quite predictable in terms of how it is presented, this has much more to do with professional imitation than objective standards. For instance, let us consider a New York Times news article that appeared on the paper’s website after the Iranian government tested missiles on July 9. — “Iranian Revolutionary Guards practicing war-game maneuvers test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday, including at least one the government in Tehran describes as having the range to reach Israel,” The New York Times reported. It would have been equally valid to lead off the news report this way: “Iranian forces practiced what they said were defensive maneuvers when they test-fired nine missiles on Wednesday — including at least one the government in Tehran describes as having the range to reach Israel, which is reportedly making preparations to launch an attack on Iran.”

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Steven Freeland; 16/7/08

This week marks the 10th anniversary of the statute of the International Criminal Court. On July 17, 1998, delegates from more than 120 countries attending a conference in Rome voted to establish a permanent international criminal body to act quickly and effectively when the most serious forms of international crime were committed. The Rome Statute confirmed the international community’s aim of “putting an end to impunity”. As a permanent court, the ICC is unlike previous international criminal tribunals established as ad hoc bodies, such as the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals following World War II and the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The ICC began its activities in July 2002, following ratification by the requisite 60 countries (there are now 106 state parties). Australia ratified the Rome Statute in July 2002 and remains a strong supporter of universal justice and the work of the court.

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16/5/08

Lawyers for the youngest detainee in the war on terror last night released a video of the tearful Canadian teenager being interrogated at Guantanamo Bay. Omar Khadr is shown being questioned by Canadian Security Intelligence Service agents in February 2003. It provides a first-ever glimpse into the secretive world of questioning enemy combatants at the US-run prison in Cuba. At one point, the then 16-year-old Khadr tells the CSIS agents he was tortured while at the US military detention centre at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where he was first detained after his arrest in 2002. He raises his orange shirt to show the wounds he sustained. The footage covers 7 1/2 hours of questioning over three days of the boy, the son of an alleged al-Qa’ida financier. A 10-minute tape was posted on the internet and a complete version was due to follow.

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