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Wed Nov 16 18:17:28 UTC 2005

Printed from : http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/22657/

Australian Anti-Terror Laws Target Muslims, Media & Intellectuals
by Gideon Polya

(Tuesday November 15 2005)

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"In 1901, newly independent racist White Australia, having largely
exterminated the indigenous aboriginal population (from 1 million in 1788
to about 0.1 million in 1900), wanted to introduce explicit "White
Australia" legislation but was dissuaded by Great Britain (which did not
want the Japanese offended, nor the hundreds of millions of non-European,
mainly Indian, subjects of the British Empire). The solution was to bring
in the 1901 Immigration Act that did not actually mention RACE but allowed
the racism to be effected in secret by Ministerial and other executive
discretion (and, when necessary, by application a fraudulent "dictation
test in any modern European language" to weed out non-European applicants
who did not realize that Australia had an un-written White Australia
Policy)."

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Driven by political and mainstream media hysteria over the terror threat
Australia is set to enact draconian new Anti-terror Laws before Christmas.
A Senate Inquiry has been given several weeks to consider legislation that
will trash 8 centuries of struggle since Magna Carta for free speech,
habeus corpus and due process. For details of over 100 submissions made to
this Inquiry (mine is #112) see [1]. These submissions may well represent
the last minute pleas from Australians before Australia becomes a Police
State.

The New Anti-Terror Laws provide 7 YEARS PRISON for sedition offences and
(among many other threatening things) critically amend the Crimes Act 1914
with the following all-encompassing additions Unlawful associations
[include] (b) any body of persons, incorporated or unincorporated, which
by its constitution or propaganda or otherwise advocates or encourages the
doing of any act having or purporting to have as an object the carrying
out of a seditious intention (see subsection (3))  (3) In this section:
seditious intention means an intention to effect any of the following
purposes: (a) to bring the Sovereign into hatred or contempt; (b) to urge
disaffection against the following: (i) the Constitution; (ii) the
Government of the Commonwealth; (iii) either House of the Parliament;
(c) to urge another person to attempt, otherwise than by lawful means, to
procure a change to any matter established by law in the Commonwealth;
(d) to promote feelings of ill-will or hostility between different groups
so as to threaten the peace, order and good government of the
Commonwealth.

A brief trip down memory lane will make us realize the potential subjects
of these laws that are set to be enacted before Christmas 2005 comedians,
cartoonists and writers referring to the Queen, Bush, Australian
politicians or indeed any person responsible for the government of another
country; history, politics and sociology academics; republican, anti-war
or simply partisan politicians; any ordinary citizen expressing opinions
about politics, war, republicanism or constitutional change; and anti-war
activists - thus under EXISTING laws, US anti-war, pacifist teacher Scott
Parkin was recently arrested, detained without charge for about a week,
maligned in Parliament, deported under escort of 2 policemen and then
charged $12,000 for the insult.

Unlike Australians, Britons and Americans are to some extent protected
from Anti-Terror Laws by Bills of Rights. However the UK Association of
University Teachers, Universities UK (UUK) (which provides guidelines for
UK university vice-chancellors) and the UK Society of College, National
and University Libraries have expressed serious concerns that library
items, research and lectures may be illegal under Britains new Anti-Terror
laws. [2]

Australian journalists and artists, notably the iconic playwright David
Williamson, are strongly opposing the sedition parts of the Anti-Terror
Laws as an egregious threat to free speech and free expression. Even
Australia's largest news organizations, namely Fairfax and the Rupert
Murdoch Empire News Ltd, sent a joint statement to the Australian Prime
Minister stating:: "The expansion of the sedition laws contemplated in
this bill is the greatest threat to publication imposed by the government
in the history of the Commonwealth. [3] The popular cartoonist Michael
Leunig of the Fairfax newspaper The Age (Melbourne) is a brilliant and
trenchant critic of the war in Iraq and the proposed Anti-Terror Laws;
indeed The Age recently published an article asking whether Leunig might
be guilty of sedition under the new laws.

Famous Australian expatriate journalist John Pilger is forthright in his
condemnation of the horrendous consequences of war. However the Media
Watch program team of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
(Australias public broadcaster) recently obtained a senior barristers
opinion on whether he would have violated the new sedition laws by his
specific comments on ABC Television about the right of occupied people to
defend themselves against illegal invaders. The senior barrister (a Queens
Counsel) indicated that John Pilger, Australias most famous journalist and
a courageous humanitarian, would be found guilty under these laws which
carry a penalty of 7 YEARS IN PRISON. [4]

In the last analysis, we depend for rational discourse on common
understanding of what words mean and the universal language of
mathematics. George Orwell in 1984 summarized the scary, State-imposed
un-reason in the following assertions of Big Brother: War is Peace,
Ignorance is Strength, Slavery is Freedom and 2 plus 2 does not equal 4.
These messages are intrinsically revived in the Australian Anti-Terror
Laws, which are actually terrorist acts themselves as defined by the
Oxford Dictionary.

Terrorism is defined by The Shorter Oxford Dictionary as "furtherance of
views through coercive intimidation". "Terrorists" "intimidate" by causing
"intense fear", typically by killing people. The draconian penalties and
outrageous opportunities for partisan executive interpretation of the
Anti-Terror Laws will certainly intimidate. To the extent that it will
highly intimidate and hence severely constrain anti-war activism, the
present Bill will promote current US-led Coalition wars and hence the
horrendous, intimidatory and continuing mass mortality in US-occupied Iraq
and Afghanistan e.g. 1,100 under-5 year old infant deaths DAILY [according
to UNICEF; see: http://www.unicef.org/ ] and a post-invasion avoidable
mortality and under-5 infant mortality totalling 2.1 million and 1.7
million, respectively, in gross contravention of the 1949 Geneva
Conventions for the protection of civilians in occupied countries. [5]

The Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws are clearly terrorist from sensible
interpretation of the English language. The Leader of the Labor
Opposition, Kim Beazley had good reason in the circumstances to describe
the evil terrorists responsible for the 7/7/05 London bombing atrocities
as subhuman filth who must be captured and eliminated. How then should we
describe those responsible through high technology war for vastly worse
avoidable mortality consequences? Those responsible for mass murder, such
as the leaders of the US-led Coalition, should be exposed, arraigned,
tried and punished by the International Criminal Court.

Australian corporate mainstream media have a culture of entrenched lying
by omission and commission and consequently IGNORE the reality that NO
Australians have died from terrorist attacks within Australia for 27 years
but that since 2001 there have been appallingly numerous Australian
avoidable deaths, namely 80,000 (from tobacco), 24,000 (indigenous
Australians), 14,000 (alcohol) and 2,000 opioid-related deaths from
passive US Coalition (including Australian) restoration of the
Taliban-destroyed Afghan opium trade (now 87% world share).

The Australian corporate mainstream media also resolutely IGNORE
Australia's complicity in the carnage involved in the US Coalition War on
Terror - the post-invasion avoidable mortality (excess mortality) and
under-5 infant mortality in the Occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories now
total 2.1 million and 1.7 million, respectively, in gross violation of the
Geneva Conventions that demand supply of life-preserving requisites to
conquered civilians by the Occupying Powers (this appalling avoidable
mortality constituting gross "passive genocide" because annual per capita
medical expenditure in these US-occupied countries is less than 1% of that
in metropolitan USA).

Despite Australian media hysteria about the "terrorism threat", NO
politicians, Security, public servants, academics, journalists or writers
(except for me) have offered any quantitative estimate of the ACTUAL
threat. The "annual Australian probability of death" is about 0.0001%
(Western civilians from Muslim terrorist attack averaged over the last 4
years), 0.001% (from a family member or acquaintance), 0.01% (from a car
accident) and 0.1% (from tobacco smoking-related causes). Rather than deal
(in order of decreasing seriousness) with deadly tobacco smoking,
globally-devastating cars and horrendous domestic violence, Australia is
entrenching Police State Anti-Terror Laws that grossly violate fundamental
human rights, are selectively directed at one of the least of Australias
avoidable mortality threats, target Muslims and IGNORE the threat and
horrendous human carnage from UK-US state terrorism (UK-US democratic
imperialism, democratic tyranny or democratic Nazism).

EXISTING Australian Anti-Terror Laws prescribe the following terms of
imprisonment: 1 YEAR (for failing to hand over your passport
"immediately"); 3 YEARS (for talking on 2 occasions with a member of a
Ministerially-proscribed (Muslim) "terrorist organization"; 5 YEARS (for
anyone reporting the detention without trial of anyone; for not providing
information or documents and for not being able to prove that you did not
possess the same (a Kafkaesque scientific impossibility)); 10 YEARS (for
membership of a group deemed to be a "terrorist organization by the
Minister); 25 YEARS (for being a leader of a group deemed to be a
terrorist group).

PROPOSED (and shortly to be enacted) Australian Anti-Terrorism Laws ALSO
prescribe Control Orders (e.g. home detention, no Internet, no telephone,
no work, limited communication, must wear a tracking device, "counselling
and education" and 5 YEARS imprisonment for any contravention of this
detention without trial); Preventative Detention (e.g. for 14 days, strip
search, fingerprinting, necessary force applied, location in remand
centres for dangerous criminals and 5 YEARS for anyone disclosing such
detention without trial); Document seizure (notwithstanding privilege,
incrimination or professional confidentiality; 2 YEARS for disclosure of
this disclosure notice); Financing "terrorism" (LIFE IMPRISONMENT e.g. for
a Muslim innocently making a donation to a charity actually "deemed" to be
"terrorist-linked"); Sedition offences (potentially covering any comment
critical of the Australian, UK or US governments, their racism,
warmongering and war crimes; anyone is liable to arrest anytime even
without warrant - however this warrant must be procured "within a
reasonable time"; 7 YEARS imprisonment).

Amnesty International, the Australian Law Council, Civil Liberties groups,
senior judges and the Australian chapter of the International Commission
of Jurists have roundly condemned these laws - laws that, unfortunately,
have popular and bipartisan support because of media lying and racist
hysteria. A major Civil Liberties lawyer has stated that these laws will
make Australia a Police State.

Amnesty International has condemned these laws, drawing special attention
to the following section of the proposed Anti-Terrorism Law that provides
a EUPHEMISM for "preventative detention without trial for 14 days": "To
avoid doubt, a person does not contravene [the non-disclosure law, penalty
5 YEARS] merely by letting another person know that the detainee is safe
but is not able to be contacted for the time being".

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) (Australian section) [see:
http://www.icj-aust.org.au/?no=33 ] has provided a detailed condemnation
of these draconian Australian Anti-Terror Laws, including the following
key analysis:

Many of these proposals represent serious departure from the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to which Australia is a party. The
IPCCR is appended to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act
1986, which has the responsibility to monitor Australians compliance with
the Covenant. Further, the Commonwealth of Australian and some States and
Territories have incorporated the ICCPR into their Evidence Acts
applicable in Australian courts. Whilst the UN may not have enforcement
powers to force Australia to comply with treaties it has adopted, as a
matter of fundamental principle and international law, Australias laws
should comply with international human rights standards we have signed on
to. Under the ICCPR, Australia is only entitled to derogate from civil and
political rights after it has declared a state of emergency in accordance
with Article 4.

In 1901, newly independent racist White Australia, having largely
exterminated the indigenous aboriginal population (from 1 million in 1788
to about 0.1 million in 1900), wanted to introduce explicit "White
Australia" legislation but was dissuaded by Great Britain (which did not
want the Japanese offended, nor the hundreds of millions of non-European,
mainly Indian, subjects of the British Empire). The solution was to bring
in the 1901 Immigration Act that did not actually mention RACE but allowed
the racism to be effected in secret by Ministerial and other executive
discretion (and, when necessary, by application a fraudulent "dictation
test in any modern European language" to weed out non-European applicants
who did not realize that Australia had an un-written White Australia
Policy).

The White Australia Policy" ceased after passage of anti-racism
legislation by the Whitlam Labor Government in 1973. However by the 1990s
a "secret" New White Australian Policy had resumed business through racial
profiling and discrimination against listed, "high risk" (typically
non-European) countries. The existing or proposed Anti-Terror Laws do not
specify Muslims or Arabs (although ALL 18 of the presently proscribed
organizations are Muslim and have Arabic names) - BUT they will clearly be
administered in a racist, bigoted and discriminatory fashion.

Thus it is permitted for Australian Jews to serve in the Israeli army in
the illegally-occupied West Bank or to give donations (small to huge) to
support illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands - but Australian
Muslims or Arabs will face 10-25 YEARS IN PRISON for association with Arab
insurgent organizations and LIFE IMPRISONMENT for unwittingly allowing
their charitable donations to proceed to a set of (all Muslim)
organizations proscribed by the right-wing, racist Australian Federal
Government.

Australia is one of the worlds' oldest continuous liberal democracies - in
the 19th century it lead the world in relation to democracy, one man one
vote, female suffrage, free education, public hospitals, public
universities, trade unions and humane working conditions (although
aboriginal Australians were only formally "counted" as Australians after a
referendum in 1967, around about the time of cessation of a dreadful
racist policy of forced removal from their mothers of tens of thousands of
aboriginal children, now known collectively as the Stolen Generation).
However, when these new Anti-Terrorism Laws are in place before Christmas
2005, racist White Australia will have become a proto-Nazi Police State.

In these last few weeks of Australian liberty, a Senate Inquiry has been
able to receive submissions about this legislation that will eliminate
free speech and no detention without charge principles presently enshrined
in British and American Law and won from despotic rulers over the 8
centuries since Magna Carta (1215). For details of the legislation and of
over 100 submissions to this Inquiry see [1].

Submissions include those from Muslims (specifically alarmed over the
clear targeting of Muslims by these laws), lawyers and civil rights groups
(over detention without trial and other legal abuses), pacifists and
anti-war groups (draconian penalties for anti-war activism), business
(dangers to business, confidence, investment, trust and profits) and
investment returns), academics (threats to freedom of speech, association
and due process) and indeed from many ordinary citizens alarmed by the
existing and proposed Police State laws (my submission is #112). [1]

Decent people should certainly consider their PERSONAL ETHICS in any
business or personal dealings with people from those countries involved in
criminal mass murder. More specifically, Australian Universities depend
financially on grossly-exploited, fee-paying, Overseas Students (typically
from South Asia, South East Asia and East Asia with this education
industry being worth several billion dollars annually to Australia). In
addition to threatening journalists and media, the Australian
Anti-Terrorism Laws will soon force all academics and indeed all teachers
to LIE by omission or commission to their students under threat of 7 YEARS
PRISON for Police State-interpreted sedition. Why should Overseas Students
(many of them Muslims) pay $40,000 per annum to be taught lies in
intellectually-compromised universities of a Muslim-targetting Police
State?

Notes:

[1].
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/terrorism/index.htm

[2]. see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1636695,00.html

[3]. see:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/10/31/Arts/aussielaw_051031.html

[4]. see: http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/s1489465.htm

[5]. see: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/92.htm and
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html